Quackbusters
by Gentleman Y
Summary: Acme Acres has a problem: monsters are plaguing the city and the only ones who can stop them are our favorite cartoon pals. (Full description inside)
1. Plot Summary

Suit up for classic comedy with your favorite cartoon pals! When Professors Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Sylvester the Cat suddenly find themselves downsized from the Looniversity, they decide to go the entrepreneurial route, hunting ghosts, apparitions, and making the occasional house call to vampy succubae. But the "paranormalists at large" face their greatest challenge when the beautiful Lola Bunny discovers her refrigerator leads directly to the gates of Hell! Now with the whole world watching, it's up to the Quackbusters to keep Acme Acres from becoming a madhouse in this hilariously-haunting action-comedy! The gang's all here – and so is the fun.

 _Looney Tunes_ characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. © All Rights Reserved.


	2. Start

A beautiful morning in Acme Acres. Breathe deep and one could smell the carbon monoxide fumes and the smog as they nibbled away at the façade of the city's Public Library while the Sparrows and Goodfeathers fluttered and scrambled for scraps amongst the students and locals lounging on the broad steps.

An ordinary day. Nothing to get excited about.

Sad to say that nothing remotely exciting had happened to "Old Square Britches" Miss Prissy, the thin spinster hen librarian of this parish, in almost six decades, not counting that incident on September 26, 1959, when Foghorn Leghorn, out of pity, slipped an egg into her nest.

Her beak held high, baby blue bonnet framing her careworn face, she wheeled her cart of books through the calm of the reading room. Green-shaded lamps formed pools of deep study and golden silence.

Clutching an armful of books to her shapeless chest, Miss Prissy headed for the basement. The iron spiral staircase led her down into a labyrinth of shelves miles long, but Miss Prissy knew her way blindfolded. Humming a little tune, she plod along the narrow musty aisles, unaware that her ordinary, unexciting day was about to change.

Behind her back a book floated off its shelf, sailed silently across the aisle, and inserted itself into the shelf opposite of its former position. Another book did the same and silently swapped places. And then another, and another. She turned and frowned, her eyes narrowed in suspicion behind her wire-rimmed glasses.

Oblivious, Miss Prissy continued down the aisle past the wooden cabinet of index card files. As she did so, one of the drawers slid open and thousands of index cards spewed into the air.

Miss Prissy heard the noise and stopped and turned around. Then, right in front of her eyes, another drawer opened, as if it was being pulled by an unseen hand. Then two more drawers slid open, then three, then five. Cards popped up and shot out everywhere until the aisle became filled with a whirling storm of index cards.

Frightened, Miss Prissy dropped her books, and ran on spindly legs between the enclosing walls of books. For a minute, she panicked, losing herself deep in the maze.

She turned a corner and her wrinkled beak went slack. Her eyes went round with terror and an intense white light overtook her.

She screamed.


	3. Shock the Duck

Acme Looniversity, where young cartoons earn their degrees.

The two stone statues, Bugs Bunny to the left and Daffy Duck to the right, like guardians of knowledge, basked serenely in the sunshine as the students walked up the front steps towards the entrance to the school.

Inside the Psychology Department, Daffy Duck was conducting an experiment with two of his students.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow at the green-feathered duck sitting across the table from him.

"All right, I'm gonna turn over the next card. I want you to concentrate. I want you to tell me what you think it is," Daffy said, taking an ESP card from the top of the deck.

A black duck and associate professor at Acme Looniversity, Daffy Duck can, at best, be described as a dimwit and a screwball, and at worst, a greedy, selfish, cheap, and self-centered glory-hound without a hint of empathy. His mocking smile and laid-back manner more than compensated for a cavernous gulf in discipline and any real achievement, in academics and in life.

Not that Daffy gave a damn about either at that precise moment. For sitting next to the green-feathered duck, Plucky by name, was a white-feathered, blonde Co-ed Loon with the sexist Valley Girl accent on campus.

At Plucky's wary nod, Daffy held the card up in his left hand, face side showing a star towards himself.

Plucky frowned, concentrating hard.

"Is it a square?" Plucky asked.

Daffy shook his head slowly and showed the card.

"Good guess. But wrong," he said.

He pressed a button on the end of a cord and Plucky jumped as an electric shock passed through the wires taped to the back of his hand.

Daffy turned his attention to the Loon, Shirley, and smiled.

"Clear your head," Daffy instructed gently as he took another card, this one with a circle, again hidden from view of his two student volunteers. "Tell me what you think it is."

"Circle," she stated.

Daffy rocked back in genuine surprise.

"It is a circle. Very good. That's great. Okay,"

He slid the card back into the deck and faced Plucky again.

"All right, think hard," he said, holding up a card with a square on it. "What is it?"

Plucked cleared his throat and glanced nervously at the electrodes on his hand.

"A figure eight?"

"Close. But definitely wrong," Daffy said, shaking his head before showing Plucky the square, and pressing the button.

Plucky jumped several inches off his chair and scowled at Daffy. He had wondered why someone had written 'Daffy Duck Burn in Hell!' in bright red paint on the window of the door to the Paranormal Studies Laboratory (the room they were in), and now it was becoming clear.

As well as being a spotlight stealer, Plucky's mentor was a sadist.

Daffy smiled at Shirley and selected another card for her – a plus sign this time.

"All right. Ready?"

She nodded.

"What is it?"

"A plus sign,"

Daffy was stunned.

"Incredible," he said in an awed tone. "That's five for five. You can't see these, can you?"

"No, no," Shirley said.

"You're not cheating, are you?"

"No, I swear they are, like, just coming to me,"

"Well, you're doing great," Daffy said admiringly. "Keep it up."

Plucky's turn again. He gritted his teeth as Daffy prepared to select another card.

"Nervous?" he asked.

"Yes," Plucky said sullenly. "I don't like this."

"You only have 75 more to go, okay?" Daffy asked, almost cheerfully. "What's this one?"

Plucky took a deep breath and concentrated for all his worth.

"A bunch of wavy lines?" he said hopefully.

That time Plucky was correct, but being the jerk that he is, Daffy lied.

"Sorry," he put down the card, shaking his head briskly. "This is just not your day."

Daffy stabbed down on the button and Plucky yelped and jumped.

"I'm getting a little tired of this!" Plucky shouted.

"You volunteered, didn't you?" Daffy shouted back. "We're paying you, aren't we?"

"Yeah, but I didn't know you were gonna give me _electric shocks!_ What are you trying to prove here, anyway?"

Daffy put on his best serious expression and said, "I'm studying the effect of negative reinforcement on ESP ability."

"The effect? I'll tell you what the effect is!" Plucky raged. "It's pissing me off!"

"Well, then my theory is correct!" Daffy yelled.

"You can keep the five bucks!" Plucky said as he ripped the electrodes from his hand and marched angrily across the lab to the door. "I've had it!"

"I will!"

Daffy sighed and ran a hand through his toupee feathers (Yes, Daffy wore a toupee. A very expensive one he purchased from a national hair association). He walked around the table and sat next to Shirley.

"You might as well get used to that," he told her after Plucky had departed. "It's the kind of resentment that your ability will provoke in some toons."

"Do you really think I have it, Professor Duck?" Shirley asked.

"You're no fluke, Shirley," he said with soulful intensity. "I think you are a very gifted telepath."

Suddenly, the door crashed open and a tall gray rabbit, Daffy's colleague and only real friend, Bugs Bunny, entered.

"This is it. This is definitely it! Did those UV lenses come in for the video camera? And that blank tape, we need it, the one you erased yesterday!"

Bugs was obviously in a hurry, hopping around the lab, wrenching open a cupboard and started rummaging inside.

"Will you excuse me for one minute?" Daffy asked Shirley, getting up, his smile strained.

Daffy went across to the cupboard and tried to smack Bugs across the head, but the hare was too quick for the duck.

"I'm in the middle of something, Bugs! I need more time with this student. Could you come back in two or three hours?"

"Daffy, at 1:40 p.m. at the main branch of the Acme Acres Public Library ten people and toons witnessed a free-floating full-torso, vaporous apparition. It blew books off shelves from 20 feet away and scared the bonnet and feathers off the poor librarian,"

"I'm very excited. Very pleased," Daffy lied. "I want you to get down there, check it out, and then report back to me."

"No, you're coming with us on this one. Sylvester's already down there. He's taken PKE valences, went right off the top of the scale. Buried the needle. We're close on this one. I can feel it,"

Daffy looked at Bugs and then at Shirley. The duck was obviously torn, but he knew what he had to do. He put on a look of pained regret, which was not difficult for him, and crossed back to the Loon.

"I have to go, Shirley, but I'd like to work with you some more. Perhaps you could come back this evening, say-?"

"Eight o'clock?" Shirley asked.

Daffy stared at her in disbelief.

"I was just going to say, 'eight o'clock'. You are a legitimate phenomenon,"

And he followed Bugs out of the lab.


	4. Get Her!

Daffy was the first out of the taxi and already striding up the steps of the Public Library while Bugs, loaded with equipment, struggled to get through the door of the cab. Typically thorough, he'd brought everything: infrared camera, psychokinetic energy (PKE) sensor, ectoplasmic detector, and a whole battery of sophisticated aural and visual sensing devices.

If there was anything remotely supernatural in the Acme Acres Public Library, Bugs was going to find it.

He caught up with Daffy, puffing slightly but still alight with the thrill of the chase.

"Bugs," Daffy said bluntly, "as your friend and roommate, I have to tell you that I value our friendship, but I think you've finally gone around the bend on this ghost business. I'll admit it was a wide-open field when we first started, but we've been running our tails off meeting and greeting every crackpot and schiz-schizo-schizophreniac in the country who says they've seen a spook or something. And what have we seen?"

"You forget, Doc, I was there when a giant monster was running amok in the Himalayas," Bugs countered.

"You mean that wannabe-Abominable Snowman who _wanted to hug you and squeeze you and call you George?_ The locals didn't even pay you for getting rid of it. They didn't even give you beads!" Daffy cast a meaningful glance at his friend. "I think you've been spending too much time with Sylvester."

The Sylvester in question was a black and white Tuxedo cat with squat legs and a big red nose. Sylvester combined the qualities of incredible pride and persistence with breathtaking envy – which helps explain at least how (and probably why) he single-handedly got Daffy through graduate school. Ever generous, Daffy's heartfelt gratitude was expressed by feeding Sylvester a healthy jackmackerel or the occasional can of tuna.

Sylvester was sitting on the floor of the main reading room when they walked in, listening to a table.

Sylvester moved the stethoscope pad along the underside of the wooden table-top, listening raptly through headphones for psychic vibrations. And when he started to hear a rhythmic beat, he thought he had made contact!

But it was just Daffy rapping his knuckles on the table to get Sylvester's attention. When that didn't work, Daffy slammed a heavy dictionary down, which nearly shattered Sylvester's eardrums.

The Tuxedo cat leapt to his feet, wrenching off the headphones.

"Oh, you're here," he said.

Daffy nodded patiently. "Yeah, what have you got?"

"This is big, Daffy, this is _very_ big," Sylvester said, spitting all over the place (as per usual). "There's definitely something here."

Daffy had heard this before. Many times. He sighed and walked on, with Bugs and Sylvester following.

"Sylvester, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head," Daffy replied. "Remember that?"

"That would've worked if you hadn't stopped me!" Sylvester said with an air of regret.

A large white rooster approached them.

"I say, I say, I'm Foghorn Leghorn," he said in a rather loud voice. "Are you boys from the school? The Looniversity, that is."

"Yes," Daffy said. "I'm Professor Duck, this is Professor Bunny and Professor Pussycat."

"Thank you, I say, thank ya'll for coming. I hope we can clear this up quickly,"

"Let's not rush things," Daffy said. "We don't even know what you have yet."

Daffy had a vague dislike of Foghorn. Former self-made CEOs turned civil-servant types were all the same – they didn't mind trouble as long as it was dumped on someone else. Anyone else.

Miss Prissy was lying on one of the couches, being treated for shock. Sending Sylvester off to continue the search, Bugs and Daffy settled down to listen to her story.

Whatever it was she saw – or thought she saw – without doubt would have turned her feathers white, if they weren't white already. And Daffy, his usual skeptical self, sat and listened with barely-concealed impatience, while Bugs sat with a big grin on his face.

"I don't remember seeing any legs but it definitely had arms, because it reached out for me," she said.

Daffy shot Bugs a sour look before he hunched forward, to speak to the old hen.

"Miss Prissy, I'm going to ask you a couple of standard questions, okay?" he began. "Have you or any member of your family ever been diagnosed schizophrenic or mentally insane?"

"My nephew thought he was Teddy Roosevelt,"

"I'd call that a big 'yes'," Daffy commented at Bugs. "Are you habitually using drugs, stimulants, alcohol?" he asked Miss Prissy.

"No,"

"Just asking. Are you, Miss Prissy, menstruating right now?"

Foghorn's eyes widened.

"Boy, I say, boy, what has that got to do with anything?" he asked.

"Back off, Rooster!" Daffy snapped laconically. "I'm a Professor."

Sylvester had returned.

"Bugs, it's moving!" Sylvester said. "Come on!"

Bugs and Daffy exchanged startled glances and ran after Sylvester.

On tiptoe, Daffy, Bugs and Sylvester, in reverse order, descended the iron spiral staircase into the basement.

Sylvester unhooked the PKE sensor—a slim black device with two wing-like antennae which extended and lit up when there was any psychokinetic energy in the immediate vicinity—and held it up. It had only three buttons, but only Sylvester knew how to use it.

So far, nothing.

Sylvester stepped around the corner and beckoned the others to follow. In the exact center of the aisle was a single stack of books that reached the ceiling. Sylvester was impressed.

"Look!" he said in a voice hushed with awe. "Symmetrical book-stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947."

"You're right," Daffy agreed in a deadpan tone. "No toon in his or her right mind would stack books like this."

Sylvester stopped and listened as a faint creaking sound broke the heavy silence.

"Listen!" he exclaimed. "Do you smell something?"

Sylvester took off with Bugs close behind and Daffy, with a shake of his head, sighed and followed.

Sylvester spotted the open empty drawers of the card index files. And they were covered in a slimy substance which was dripping in long, sticky strands to the floor.

"Holy telekinetic activity!" Sylvester exclaimed. "Look at this mess! Ectoplasmic residue."

"It's the real thing," Bugs confirmed.

"Daffy, get a sample of this!" said Sylvester.

"Somebody blows their nose and you wanna keep it?" Daffy asked.

"I'd like to analyze it,"

"There's more over here," said Bugs.

"I'm getting stronger readings here," Sylvester confirmed. "This way. Come on."

With patent disgust, Daffy scooped up a glob of the stuff and scraped it into a small greaseproof container. Daffy got some of it on his hand and tried to flick it off, but in doing so, got some of it in his eye, which he proceeded to wipe off and onto the books.

"Sylvester, your mucus," he said, handing it to the cat.

Suddenly, a full case of books toppled over right behind them.

They leapt out of the way through a choking cloud of dust.

Daffy turned to Bugs and asked, "This happened to you before?"

Bugs shook his head.

"First time?"

Bugs nodded.

The lights on the PKE sensor started winking and the antennae slowly extended as it detected an ethereal presence... in a dark aisle a few feet away.

Creeping forward, the three of them peered around the corner. And there it was.

An elderly woman in an ornate wig, and wearing a period gown, was calmly reading a book. Nothing too remarkable about that, except that she was floating three feet off the ground and they could see right through her.

Bugs and Sylvester couldn't believe their eyes and Daffy was totally stunned. As an associate professor, and a firm believer in facts over fairy tales, Daffy had always had a healthy disbelief in the supernatural.

"There is it," Sylvester whispered. "A full torso apparition. And it's real."

"So, what do we do?" Daffy asked.

Bugs and Sylvester looked at each other.

They didn't know what to do.

"Could you come over here and talk to me for a second, please?" Daffy asked as he dragged Bugs by the ear and back around the corner. "Could you just come here for a second, please? Right over here. Come here, come here. What do we do?"

"I don't know. What do you think?" Bugs asked Sylvester.

"We've got to make contact," Sylvester replied. "One of us should actually try to speak to it."

"Good idea," Bugs agreed.

They both looked at Daffy.

Daffy huffed and rolled his eyes.

He walked around the corner while Sylvester swung the camera up and started taking infrared pictures. He was feeling like a kitten on Christmas morning.

"Hi. I'm Daffy. Where are you from? Originally,"

Daffy cowered back a little as the apparition turned, but seemed to look right through him. The figure raised a finger to her lips.

"Sshhhh!" she said softly.

Daffy stepped back behind the bookcase again and said, "All right. Okay. The usual stuff isn't working."

"Okay, I have a plan," said Sylvester. "I know exactly what to do."

With the others on either side, watching him for a sign, Sylvester slowly began to walk forward. Halting a few feet away from the spectral figure, Sylvester whispered, "Stick close and do exactly as I say."

The other two nodded. They were glad Sylvester had a plan.

"Get her!" he shouted.

Sylvester leaped, arms outstretched, in a spasm of pure reflex. Unfortunately, having disturbed the lady's reading, he'd also made her mad.

Suddenly, the old Granny in the gown was gone – and in her place was a huge purple skull. Scrambling, our heroes made a hasty retreat to the staircase and they didn't stop until they were outside with Foghorn Leghorn calling from behind.

"Did you see, I say, did you see it? What was it?"

"We'll get back to you!" Daffy replied.


	5. Terminated

"'Get her.' That was your whole plan? Get her?" Daffy asked.

He was remonstrating with Sylvester as the three of them walked back across campus to the Paranormal Studies Lab.

"I got overexcited," Sylvester admitted. "But wasn't it incredible? We actually touched the etheric plane. You know what this could mean to the Looniversity?"

"Yeah," Daffy said with a fine edge of sarcasm. "It's gonna be bigger than the Internet and the cell phone."

"Well, I wouldn't say the experience was completely wasted," Bugs interjected. "According to Sylvester's readings, we have an excellent chance of actually capturing a ghost and containing it."

This hit Daffy like a bombshell and stopped him in his tracks.

"Indefinitely," Sylvester added. "The possibilities are limitless. If the ionization rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities we could really kick some tail. In the spiritual sense, of course."

Daffy caught up and asked, "Bugs, Sly, are you guys serious about this catching a ghost?"

"I'm always serious," Sylvester replied.

"Sylvester, I'm gonna take back some of the things I've said about you. Take this. You've earned it,"

Sylvester's eyes lit up as he grabbed the offered mackerel and stuffed it into his mouth as they entered the lab.

The place was a shambles. Workmen were dismantling the equipment and wheeling it out. Daffy was pushed aside by a burly maintenance man, who was carrying a CRT display. They sized up the situation at once and strode over to Vice-Principal Yosemite Sam, Professor Tweety and Dean Road Runner, the latter who was standing on one leg while holding an inventory list in the other, and clasping a pencil in his beak (which he used to check off the list).

Sylvester and Tweety had been adversaries from way back. So had Bugs and Yosemite Sam. Fighting down his anger, Sylvester asked, "What's going on here?"

"Ya'll are being moved off campus," Yosemite said with a smile. "Ya'll are to vacate these premises immediately."

"This is **_preposterous-th-th_** ," Daffy said. "I demand an explanation."

"Fine. The rest of the School Board has decided to terminate your grant. This school will no longer continue any funding of any kind for your extramural activities," Tweety added.

"But the kids love us," Daffy said.

"That's not the impression that Plucky Duck gave us when he came into Sam's office this morning," Tweety said. Then he added quietly, " _Professor_ Duck, we believe the purpose of teaching is to serve toonkind. You, however, seem to regard teaching and science, like everything else, as some kind of hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable at best. You are a **_piss poor_** excuse for a teacher, Professor Duck."

"Ya'll have no place in this department and ya have no place in the Looniversity," Sam stated.

Dean Road Runner nodded in agreement.

"Does that include Professor Cat and me?" Bugs asked.

"Ya better believe it, rabbit," Sam replied.

Sylvester pulled Daffy aside and growled, "You said you had **_floored_** them at the Board meeting."

"I apologize," Daffy replied.

Bugs and Sylvester walked out, but Daffy stayed behind. Daffy was rarely ever at a loss for words, especially since his name included meanings like, "silly, foolish, eccentric and insane." And when it came to an argument of any kind, Daffy always wanted to have the last word.

"You know I have to laugh," he said with a smile. "They did this to Honey and Bosco."

"It could have been worse, ya varmint," Sam said. "The Warner kids smashed Buddy with a giant mallet."

"Ouch," Daffy commented.

Now, he was at a loss for words.


	6. Fixer-Upper

Daffy slumped against the statue of himself in front of the Looniversity while Sylvester paced back and forth. Earlier that morning their futures looked bright, now they were in ruins.

"This is a disgrace," Sylvester said. "Forget Perfecto Prep or Toontown now. They wouldn't touch us with a cattle prod."

"You're always so concerned about your reputation," Daffy replied. "We don't need the Looniversity. Einstein did his best stuff when he was working as a patent clerk!"

"Do you know how much a patent clerk earns?" Sylvester asked.

"No!"

"Personally, I _like_ the Looniversity. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results,"

For someone who'd just lost his job, Daffy seemed remarkably unconcerned. He took a swig from a half-pint bottle of Scotch and grimaced with pleasure as the glow infiltrated his insides. He offered the bottle to Sylvester, who shook his head.

"For whatever reasons, Sly, call it Fate, call it Destiny, call it luck, karma or God, I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump,"

"For what purpose?" Sylvester asked.

Daffy took another swig of whiskey and said, "To go into business for ourselves."

There was a visionary spark in Daffy's eyes and a narrow, crafty grin on his bill.

Sylvester blinked.

The idea was attractive, but it was also strewn with snags.

"This ecto-containment system Bugs and I have in mind is going to require a load of capital," he said. "Where are we going to get the money?"

"Bugs," Daffy stated. "You know he invented the carrot peeler, right? He lives off the royalties. We'll just ask him for a loan."

Daffy clapped Bugs on the shoulder as the three of them emerged from the granite portals of the Acme Acres Bank.

Daffy was happy, Bugs was concerned, and Sylvester was working figures on his pocket calculator.

"You're not going to regret this, Bugs," Daffy said.

"Okay, but why me?" Bugs asked.

"Because it's your civic responsibility," replied Daffy. "The public will listen to you! A household name for almost a century of wholesome family entertainment! And you're the only one with the money."

"I don't know," Bugs said doubtfully.

"Look, I know I've steered you wrong before," Daffy said, "but we are about to embark on a potentially lucrative business endeavor: professional paranormal investigations and eliminations. Crusaders against the undead! The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. So, what do you say? Is it a deal?"

"Sure, sure,"

"Then it's settled!" Daffy declared as he strode confidently along, dodging pedestrians. "Together, we will see that ingrate ghosts are wiped off the face of the Earth!" he said, thumping his palm with his fist. "We'll rid the world of disgusting ectoplasmic slime!"

"But most people are afraid to even report these things," Bugs pointed out, bringing Daffy back down to Earth.

"Maybe," Daffy grinned in reply. "But no one ever thought about advertising before."

But before they could start advertising, there was the problem of finding the right premises. Two days later, after calling half a dozen real estate agents, Bugs found what he thought was the perfect location: a square, three-story abandoned fire station built around the turn of the 20th Century.

Mary Melody showed them around. The frontage, on a dingy street, with its faded paint, was not very appealing. Inside the wide double doors, a white-tiled garage bay extended back to a repair shop. Still in place was the shiny brass pole, disappearing through a hole in the ceiling to the sleeping quarters on the floor above.

Bugs crinkled his nose at the smell of disuse. He wanted the place, but he didn't want Mary to know it. He listened with feigned indifference as she rhymed off the old firehouse's appointments.

"Besides this, you've got another substantial work area, office space, sleeping quarters and showers on the next floor and there's a full kitchen on the top level. It's 10,000 square feet in total,"

Sylvester came through from the partitioned office at the back, fingers busy with his calculator.

"Actually, it's 9,643.55 square feet," he corrected her.

"What is he – your accountant?" Mary asked Bugs.

"It just seems a little pricey for a unique fixer-upper opportunity, that's all," Bugs said hesitantly, as if racked with doubt. "We're trying to keep our costs down," he explained. "You know how it is when you're starting a new company."

"Sure, I know,"

Bugs signaled with his eyebrows to Sylvester. At this rate, they were going to have to pay top dollar.

"What do you think, Sylvester?" he asked.

And, as if on cue, Sylvester came to the rescue.

"I think, at the very least, this building should be condemned. Have you taken into account its grave defects?" he asked Mary. Then he began to list them. "There's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members. The beam structure is faulty. The wiring is substandard as well as completely inadequate for our power needs. The floors are subsiding, there's dry rot in the woodwork, the plumbing is disconnected... And the neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone."

"Hey!" Daffy called out, making his appearance through the hole in the ceiling. "Does this pole still work?"

He slid down the brass pole and landed at Bugs's feet, a big childlike grin pasted on his face.

"This place is great," Daffy said. "You have got to try this pole. When can we move in? Hey, we should stay here tonight, sleep here. You know, to try it out. I'm gonna get my stuff!"

Bugs looked at Mary Melody and said, "Eh, looks like we'll take it."

"Good. I'll get the paperwork. It's out in my car,"

After the paperwork was all said and done, and Mary had left, Bugs looked at his cohorts and asked, "So, what are we going to call our business? Paranormalists at Large?"

"Ghouls 'R' Us?" Sylvester suggested.

"I was thinking something more like 'Quackbusters'," Daffy added.

"Please," Bugs replied. "What kind of egomaniac would name their organization that?"

"So, sue me," Daffy countered. "It was just a suggestion."


	7. Fried Eggs and Woe

Like a minnow escaping a shoal of barracuda, a taxi peeled away from the bumper-to-bumper traffic and turned into the swanky part of town. With a squeal of the brakes it stopped outside the high-rise Acme Arms apartment building, which at first appeared to be a remnant stage set from a musical.

Rising over forty stories, the Gothic-Art Deco structure was topped by marble columns and a polished dome of what appeared to be some kind of temple, complete with an altar and a flight of stone steps leading up to a pair of bronze doors, inlaid with dull gleaming copper.

Strangely and more ominously, a pair of huge stone beasts stood on pedestals, guarding the temple. With left paws raised, claws extending, they stared with blank eyes across the towers and canyons of Acme Acres.

Seen in the slanting light of the late afternoon sun, the structure and petrified beasts possessed a quality of disturbing unreality, and menace. As if, lost in another time, they were waiting for the day when at last they would be called upon to fulfill their dreadful duty.

Still, it had a great view of Acme Park.

Which was one of the reasons why Lola Bunny, the stunningly attractive bunny stepping out of the cab, chose to live there in the two-bedroom apartment on the twenty-second floor.

Lola juggled a bag of groceries and a duffel bag while she tried to pay the driver. She'd had a hard day of practicing.

"Now," she thought, as she entered the elevator, "I'll take a hot scented bath, sit naked in my living room, and listen to some music."

This plan met its first setback as Lola walked tiredly along the corridor, the weight of the gym bag slowing her down.

The setback came in the form of an over-zealous, suave, debonair skunk in a crimson collared shirt and black slacks named Pepé Le Pew, her neighbor one door down and across the hallway. When Lola first moved in, Pepé's heart sang. Most evenings he would wait behind the door, counting the seconds for the beautiful Siren's return.

Lola thought it had been an accident that she got the penthouse down and across the hall from Pepé's condo. But Pepé did not believe in accidents. Lola had tried to be kind to Pepé, recognizing the symptoms of a hopeless and unrequited passion. But tonight, she had to muster up all of her patience to deal compassionately with the Casanova of Acme Arms.

"Oh, Lola, it's you," he said, as if caught by surprise.

"Hi, Pepé. Yes, it's me,"

"I thought it was the deliveryman,"

Despite her better judgment, Lola stopped.

"Are you expecting something important?"

"Oh no, I just ordered some more _Chocolat,_ " he said.

Lola Bunny was the most gorgeously sexy creature Pepé had ever encountered. Tall and slender, with long legs that led right up to her tight, firm bunny bum, she had all the style and grace of Pepé's ideal woman: talented, independent, and with a determined tilt of her jaw that told the world that Lola Bunny knew what she wanted.

Pepé wished it was him; every night he dreamed of ravishing her.

"Would you like to come in for a glass of Champagne? Or at least sit and banter with me if only for a few brief moments?"

"Oh, I'd love to, Pepé, but I'm really tired. I've been practicing all day and I have to put these away," she said with a smile. "Excuse me."

"A rain check, then?" he asked, walking beside her. "Oh, before I forget, I'm having a little get together next month for some of the other residents. It's my fifth anniversary as a wedding planner. I know you probably think I'm a creep, I understand if you do, but I would like you to at least stop by, since you're my neighbor."

"Thank you, Pepé. No promises but I'll try," she said, fumbling for her key.

"Also, you left your TV on when you went out. The Pit Bull down the hall phoned the manager. I thought you should know,"

Lola frowned and listened. She could hear the sound through the door.

"That's strange. I didn't realize I left it on," she said, slipping into her apartment.

"So, I'll see you later?"

"Bye, Pepé," she said as the door closed gently but firmly in his face.

Lola dumped her duffel bag next to the couch. She reached for the remote to turn off the TV, but she paused when a commercial announced, _"And now, an important message for you and your entire family..."_

A black duck, a Tuxedo cat and a gray rabbit, all dressed in some sort of combat uniforms, stepped up to the camera.

"Hello, folks," Daffy began in a cheerful voice. "Have you ever been woken up by strange noises in the middle of the night?"

"Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?" asked Sylvester.

"Have you or any of your family ever seen a spook, specter, gremlin, ghoul or ghost?" Bugs added.

"If the answer is yes, then don't wait another minute," Daffy went on. "Pick up your phone and call us: Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Sylvester Pussycat, _Quackbusters_. Our highly-skilled professional and courteous staff is equipped with the most advanced technology and is on call 24/7 to serve all of your supernatural-elimination needs."

And Daffy listed them as they appeared and scrolled up on the screen.

"Spooks Spooked, Goblins Gobbled, U.F.O.'s K.O.'d, Aliens Alienated, Vampires Evaporated, and Monsters Remonstrated."

The camera zoomed into a close-up of Daffy wearing a fixed, cheesy smile and he said, "Just call 555-5925. Remember, that's the same as dialing 555-KWAK."

As the telephone number appeared on the screen, Lola hit the "Power" button on her remote.

"'Quackbusters.' What a joke," she thought. "The gray hare's kinda cute, though."

In the kitchen, she unpacked her groceries and placed a carton of eggs on the counter. After the experience with Pepé, that hot bath seemed more inviting than ever.

"But first put these away," she thought as she reached up to open the cupboard.

Stifling a yawn, she put away a box of crackers and a loaf of bread. Behind her back the lid on the carton of eggs flipped open. The two neat rows of eggs started to shake. Then vibrate. An egg jumped out and smashed on the counter-top. A second did the same, and a third. And as they shattered they started to sizzle.

Lola turned around and gave a startled gasp. The eggs were frying on the counter. But when she touched the counter with tentative fingers, the plastic was cool, almost cold in fact.

Standing in the middle of her kitchen, Lola stared at the frying eggs with mesmerized eyes. There had to be a rational explanation. But she could not think of one.

Then, her heart leaped in her chest as something nearby gave a low, deep-throated growl.

It was her refrigerator.

Edging towards it, Lola reached out at full stretch and grasped the chrome handle. Part of her was telling her to not open it. Another part was saying not to be so stupid. People weren't afraid of their fridges. It was the 21st Century, after all.

The firm jaw that Pepé admired so stiffened. She yanked the door wide open.

Lola staggered back as a blood-red blast of heat and light poured into the kitchen. The inside of her fridge was a blazing inferno. Shafts of piercing light and swirling mist dazzled her eyes with fantastic shapes. The growling was very loud now, as if it were coming from the jaws of some demonic hound. In the distance, she could see a flight of stone steps, and beyond, shimmering through the heat, a pair of bronze temple doors.

The doors opened and from deep within came a hoarse whisper that made the blood congeal in her veins. Not of this world, it filled her head with a single word—

"Woe!"

Lola screamed and slammed the door shut.


	8. The First Customer

Daffy stood outside the old fire station and proudly surveyed the freshly-painted sign above the garage doors. It showed a single word in two feet high black letters on a white board: "Quackbusters". But the "Q" had been replaced with the international symbol of prohibition – the red circle with the diagonal red bar across it – and the bar looked like it had been cut in half and the bottom half formed the tail of the "Q".

"You don't think it's too subtle, do you?" Daffy asked the workmen while they were hanging up the sign. "You don't think people are gonna drive down and not see it?"

The firehouse was shaping up nicely. The maintenance bay had been cleaned and swept, the offices had been refurbished, all major repair work had been completed, and a brand-new paint job on the front of the building. The sign was the finishing touch. Now they were in business.

"If there _is_ any business," Daffy reminded himself glumly.

The TV commercials had eaten a big hole in their capital, and still not a single enquiry.

Daffy turned with a growl of annoyance as an antiquated Cadillac ambulance rumbled up and parked right outside the doors. The bumpers were hanging off and the dull black bodywork was scratched and dented. On the roof, the emergency lights were cracked and twisted on their brackets.

"Hey, you can't park that here!"

Bugs got out of the driver's seat and closed the door carefully on its single hinge.

"Relax, I found the car," he said.

Daffy gazed with dismay at the decrepit monstrosity. It wallowed and groaned like it was in pain.

"It needs a lot of work, though," Bugs said. "Suspension, new shocks, brakes, brake pads, linings, steering box, transmission, rings, mufflers, engine mountings, wiring... and possibly a rear axle."

"How much?" asked Daffy.

"Only forty-eight hundred,"

Inside, in the ground floor office, Penelope Pussycat presided over the silent switchboard. For the third time that morning she sharpened her claws to a perfect point. Pert and petite, with short dark fur, a fluffy black tail and a cute little nose, she peered at her handiwork.

"Penelope, any calls?" Daffy asked.

Intent on her claws, Penelope mumbled, "No."

"Any messages?"

The sight of her with nothing to do annoyed him.

"No,"

"Any customers?"

Finally, she looked up and said, "No, Mr. Duck."

"It's a good job, isn't it?"

She smiled in reply.

"Type something, will you? We're paying for this stuff," Daffy said irritably as he made his way to the open-plan office behind the reception area. "And don't stare at me. I'll be in my office."

Sylvester's head popped out from under Penelope's desk, a screwdriver between his teeth and a bunch of wires in one paw. Sylvester crawled out, having finished the wiring job.

"You're very handy. I can tell," Penelope said. "I bet you like to read a lot too."

"Print is dead," Sylvester replied shortly.

"Well, it's very fascinating to me," Penelope said in a sexy, soothing voice that only Tress MacNeille could pull off. "I read a lot myself. Some people think I'm too intellectual, but I think it's a great way to spend your time. I also play tennis. You seem very athletic – do you have any hobbies?"

"Oh, the usual: I hunt, I fish, I sing opera, I know a little hypnotism, I dabble in extreme sports like skydiving, _mostly off of buildings..._ I'm also an avid member of the Acme Bird Watchers' Society,"

"Oh," Penelope's face brightened.

Bugs was making some serious repairs on the Cadillac's engine when ten minutes later, a tall, curvaceous young female bunny with tan and cream colored fur, a powder puff tail and blonde bangs entered through the swing doors and approached Penelope's desk rather hesitantly. She was wearing a white tank top with blue short shorts, and her ears were tied back by a black rubber band like a ponytail.

"Hello?" she called out, glancing around doubtfully at the plain green walls and flaking plaster ceiling. Already she was beginning to regret this.

Penelope laid down her nail file and sat up straight, the model of bright-eyed, and (quite literally) bushy-tailed, efficiency.

"Excuse me. Is this-? This is the Quackbusters' office,"

"Yes, it is," Penelope replied. "Can I help you?"

"I don't have an appointment, but I would like to talk to someone, please,"

Daffy's head popped up from behind a row of filing cabinets and he cleared the rail bordering the office area in a single leap.

"I'm Daffy Duck. May I help you?"

"Well, I don't know," Lola hesitated. "What I have to say may sound a little unusual."

"That's all we get, day in, day out, around this place," Daffy replied.

Bugs wiped his hands with a rag before smoothing the fur on his head, and approached them.

Not only their first customer, but _what_ a customer! She had to be the most beautiful bunny Bugs had ever seen in his entire existence.

He took one look at her and was instantly, hopelessly, smitten.

"I'm sure we can help, Missus...?" he ventured.

" _Miss,_ " she corrected him. "Miss Bunny. Miss Lola Bunny," she said, extending her hand, which Bugs shook with a sweating palm.

"Lola?" he repeated.

"Yes,"

"My name is Bugs. So, what seems to be the problem, doll?"

The aqua of Lola's eyes turned to fire.

" _'Doll?!'_ " she repeated.

"Uh-huh," Bugs replied.

"Well, I seem to be having trouble with my kitchen appliances, _Bugs,_ "

"Why don't you step upstairs and we'll talk about it," Daffy said. "Penelope, hold all our calls."

"What calls?" Penelope replied, returning to the black pit of boredom and her nail file.

* * *

Lie-detector pads were taped to Lola's temples, a video camera was recording her every facial expression, and she was surrounded by three men, well, one gray rabbit, one black duck, and one Tuxedo cat, at least one of whom – the brashly confident Bugs Bunny – seemed to have other things on his mind than getting to the bottom of her problem.

If she'd seen that glint once, she'd seen it a thousand times before.

"And this voice said, 'Woe,' and then I slammed the refrigerator door and I left. That was two days ago, and I haven't been back to my apartment," she finished.

Daffy exchanged glances with Bugs and Sylvester; then focused back on Lola.

"Generally, you don't see that kind of behavior in a major appliance, at least not the refrigerator," Daffy commented. The corner of Lola's mouth twitched into a smile. Until he added, "Usually it's the microwave or the blender. What do you think it was?" he asked, leaning forward intently.

They watched Lola closely as she attempted to give the question serious consideration. Under the circumstances – not to mention their rabid scrutiny – Lola found it somewhat difficult.

Bringing her mind back to the question, Lola answered, "If I knew what it was, I wouldn't be here."

"Sylvester, what do you think?" Daffy asked.

"She's telling the truth," he said, after studying the polygraph readout. "At least she believes she is."

"Of course, I'm telling the truth," Lola said, offended. "Who would make up a story like that?"

"Some are people who just want attention," Daffy answered. "Others are nutcases who come off the street."

"Or it could be a past life experience intruding on present time," Sylvester added. "A memory stored in the collective unconscious. I wouldn't rule out clairvoyance or telepathic contact either."

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe in any of those things," Lola replied.

"Well neither do I," said Bugs. "But there are some things we do standard procedure in a case like this, which often bring us results."

"I don't even know my sign," Lola added.

"You're a Scorpio with your moon in Leo and Aquarius rising," Sylvester said, referring to his notes. "You're bright, ambitious, outgoing... You're the best parts of the Hawksian woman, tomboy, and femme fatale all rolled into one."

Lola narrowed her eyes shrewdly.

"Were there any other words spoken that you remember?" Bugs asked.

"No, just the one word – 'Woe',"

Sylvester frowned over his notes as Bugs helped Lola remove the pads from her head.

"I'll see if I can find any reference to the name 'Woe' in the usual literature," Sylvester suggested. " _Spates Catalog, Tobin's Spirit Guide._ "

"Good idea," Bugs said, almost mechanically.

"And I could go to the Hall of Records for the building's structural details," Daffy added. "It could have a history of psychic turbulence. And Bugs, you can take Miss Bunny back to her apartment and check her out." He cleared his throat and corrected himself. "Check out her apartment."

"Thank you," Lola said.

As Lola slipped into her coat and headed downstairs, Bugs sarcastically whispered to Daffy, "Smooth."


	9. Checking Out Lola

As Lola unlocked the door to her apartment, Bugs raised a cautioning gloved hand. He pointed inside, indicating that he should go first.

"Please, let me," he said. "If something's gonna happen here, I want it to happen to me first."

Lola nodded.

Bugs sidled through the door and crept forward, Lola close behind. The window gave a panoramic view of the park. The trees cast shadows from the setting sun. The living room was in a semidarkness and rather eerie, but otherwise appeared quite normal.

Gaining confidence, Bugs ventured further into the room and approached the piano. He lifted the lid and tinkled a trill of high notes, explaining, "Trust me, they hate this. It drives them wild."

Lola leaned nonchalantly against the wall and raised a skeptical eyebrow, still waiting for the "expert" to spring into action.

Bugs did. Whipping around his sniffer-wand, he pumped the rubber bulb at one end, extending the rod into a long probe, which he wafted about aimlessly. Fortunately, Bugs knew how to use it.

Bugs thought about asking Lola if she'd thought about moving out – at least until the disturbance blew over. But then he thought, if she did she would be acknowledging that what happened was real. And he didn't think she was ready to do that.

Bugs waved the wand around some more. Lola leaned her head to one side and asked, "What is that thing you're doing?"

"This? Oh, it's an invention of Sylvester's. He calls it the 'sniffer-wand'. It's supposed to detect psychic presence, kinetic disturbances... but all it seems to do is convert any scent within 20 a yard radius into a digital audio signal,"

"I see,"

Bugs continued to wander around the room, waving the sniffer-wand here and there.

"It's a lot of space," he observed, "even on a basketball player's salary. Just you?"

"Yes,"

Bugs looked towards a door.

"That's the bedroom," Lola said, taking her coat off and hanging it up. "But nothing ever happened in there."

Bugs cast an appreciative eye over her neat figure in short shorts and tank top.

"That's a crime," he muttered.

"You know, you don't act like a scientist,"

"I know. They're usually pretty stiff,"

"You're more like a game-show host,"

"Actually, I was a teacher," Bugs said sourly before turning to the door behind him. "That's the kitchen?"

Lola nodded.

Bugs hid his reluctance. He was not sure what he was looking for, and a part of him didn't wish to find it. But he was there, and he wanted to impress her.

He pushed open the kitchen door and Lola followed him in. The cooked eggs, now hard and crinkly, were still on the counter.

"Are these the eggs?"

"Yes. I was over there and these eggs just jumped right out of their shells and started to cook _on_ the counter,"

"That is weird," he said, scanning them with the sniffer-wand.

Nothing.

"That's when I started to hear that awful noise coming from the refrigerator,"

Bugs squared his shoulders and gripped the handle of the six-foot tall appliance.

"All right. Stand back," he warned.

Putting his face up close to it, he opened the door a crack and squinted inside with one eye. Then reared back, his face contorted with horror.

"Oh, my God," he said.

"What? What is it?" Lola exclaimed, her heart pounding.

"Look at all the junk food," he said, opening it all the way.

"No. This wasn't-This wasn't here. There was nothing here. There was a building with flames coming out of it. There were creatures and they were growling and snarling. And I heard a voice say, 'Woe'. Well, that's great!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Either I have a monster in my kitchen or I'm going crazy."

"I believe you, doll. Really, I do, but I'm just not getting a reading,"

Lola glared at him. The angry gleam once again had fire dancing around the edges of it.

"What?" Bugs ventured.

"You don't believe me," she said.

She turned on her heel and stormed back into her living room with Bugs close behind her.

"You don't believe anything happened here and you didn't believe me at the office. You just came over to see what you could get off me! Mr. Bunny, just because I'm a female basketball player doesn't mean that I don't know the look of lust in a man's eyes when I see it,"

Bugs had had enough – of Lola and her attitude.

"I am the face and mascot of the second largest entertainment company in North America **and** the world. Second **_only_** to the Mouse!" he said. "I believe that something happened here and I want to do something about it! I want to help you."

"You think you can do something?" she challenged, the color high in her cheeks.

"I would state my very reputation on it," he said, rather calmly.

"All right," Lola nodded slowly, prepared to give it another shot and Bugs the benefit of the doubt. "What do you want to do?"

"What I would like to do, on a purely scientific basis," he said carefully, "is spend the night here to see if anything else happens. But since you deliberately decide to misinterpret that as sexual harassment and/or assault, I'll just take my sniffer and leave. But at least allow me one thing: let me investigate further. Let me check in with my colleagues, we'll do a little research and together we will solve your little problem."

Lola hesitated before answering.

"All right," she said.

"Thank you," he replied.

"And don't ever call me 'doll'," she stated.

Bugs finally saw that look in her eye. It was the look of a woman who hated being branded or characterized the names and labels of stereotypes from another, outdated, era. And it brought tears to her eyes.

Bugs hated to see grown men cry.

He hated seeing women cry even more.

That was his weak spot.

"Lola. I-"

"Just go," she said firmly.

Bugs walked toward the door and opened it. In the doorway, he turned and took one last look at Lola before leaving.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely.

And he left, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Penelope was about to head home for the night when Bugs returned to the firehouse.

"So much for the exciting prospect of working for an outfit of professional ghost-catchers," she thought.

She'd had more excitement watching the freezer defrost.

Bugs flopped onto Penelope's desk and laid there on his back.

"So, how did it go?" she ventured.

"You want to know something?" he began. "I go home from work and all I have is my work. There's nothing else in my life. And then, I meet this girl and I said to myself, 'There's someone with the same problem I have.'"

Penelope shrugged and gave Bugs a crumpled smile.

"I'm nuts about her," he said finally.

"I don't believe this," Penelope said.

"I am madly in love with her. And then she threw me out of her life. She thought I was a jerk, and she probably wasn't the first..."

"No," Penelope said.

"I've got it!" Bugs exclaimed as he bolted up on the desk. "I'll prove myself to her. I am going to solve her problem. And then she'll say, 'Bugs Bunny is a rabbit who can get things done. I wonder what makes him tick. I wonder if he'd be interested in knowing what makes me tick.' I bet she's probably thinking about me right now. She's probably been thinking about me since I left."

"Mr. Bunny, if there's nothing else-" Penelope interrupted.

"No," Bugs said, getting off the desk. "Go on home."

Bugs went upstairs to the living quarters and he saw that Sylvester had laid out a series of Chinese takeout boxes and a six-pack of ice cold Billy Beer for dinner. Meanwhile, Daffy was going over the mail. His eyes kept darting back and forth between the letters and a series of tax forms.

"Bill, bill, bill, junk, bill... Now, subtract that, carry the one and-Ugh!" he groaned. "The company's crashing down around me! And these tax forms aren't making it any better. I can't deduct anything. I can't write off anything. I can't even claim my girlfriend as a dependent!"

Bugs took a seat at the table as Sylvester cracked open a can of the Billy Beer. Daffy decided to take a break from the paperwork and joined them soon after.

Bugs hoisted his can and said, "To our first customer."

"To our first and only customer," Sylvester added.

"I'll need to draw some petty cash," Bugs told them. "I should take her out to dinner. We don't want to lose her."

"Uh, this _magnificent feast_ here," Sylvester said, motioning to the Chinese takeout, "represents the _last_ of the petty cash."

"The money supply is dwindling," Daffy confirmed. "I'm down to _my_ last million. All I can say is that some rich sucker better materialize soon."

"Well, in that case, slow down," Bugs told them. "Chew your food."

Just then, the telephone downstairs started ringing.


	10. We Got One!

Penelope was about to switch off the desk lamp and pick up her coat and handbag when the phone rang.

"Hello, Quackbusters," she said, answering the phone. "Yes, of course they're serious."

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes lit up.

"What? You do? You have? Since when? No kidding,"

She hunted for a pencil and started scribbling furiously.

"Uh-huh. Yes. Yes? Hmm... Yes, sir. Well, just give me the address... Yes, of course. Oh, don't worry, they'll be totally discreet. Thank you,"

She hung up and jumped up, shouting, "We got one!"

She hit the alarm button and the bell shrilled through the building.

"It's a call!" Daffy shouted.

Bugs, Daffy and Sylvester leapt to their feet, scattering the cartons of chow mein and garlic shrimp in every direction. They ran for the brass pole and hit the garage bay to the lockers. They grabbed their jumpsuits and climbed into them.

Strapping on heavy proton drive backpacks, they clipped particle throwers to their belts and grabbed containment traps from the power chargers. Fully suited-up, straps tightened, harnesses double-checked, and they were ready to go!

The garage doors slid back and the broken-down Cadillac roared into the street. Only it wasn't broken down anymore. It had been transformed into a gleaming white ghost-hunting mobile!

A flashing purple-and-white strobe display lit up the dark street. Communication antennae spun on the roof, and on the doors, the international prohibition symbol fashioned to look like a "Q" was emblazoned in red and white.

As the Quackbuster Mobile headed uptown, giving off a weird ultraviolet aura, the low earthly moan of its siren echoed throughout the city. Inside, three jubilant and nervously excited toons.

Their first real assignment: the Dry Gulch Hotel and Casino.

* * *

While many hotels have their dark secrets, this Western-themed casino-hotel had topped them all. Ever since it opened its doors in 1854, a mere five years after the California Gold Rush began, the Dry Gulch exuded an eerie atmosphere, and an inordinate number of guests and staff had met untimely ends due to strange accidents as well as foul play.

To this day, the staff took great care of the hotel, but they didn't appreciate any disturbances other than the ones that they created themselves.

The Quackbusters walked in the front doors of the hotel and Daffy literally shouted, "Hey, anybody see a monster?"

The lobby looked like a Western saloon (and it had been at one point in time), but now it was thinly made over with modernist touches. There were refurbished elevators, and the rooms had swipe cards instead of keys. But the building hadn't really changed much.

The manager of the hotel, a white and yellow cat with a shock of red hair, who went by the name of Claude, steered them through quickly, groaning at the fuss and speculation their appearance had caused amongst the clientele.

He wasn't expecting this. Not dressed in combat-style uniforms. And with all that heavy equipment strapped to their backs, looking like something out of a science-fiction movie.

Still, he was desperate.

"Thank you for coming so quickly," he said in a low and agitated tone. "The guests are starting to ask questions, and I'm running out of excuses."

"Has it happened before?" Sylvester enquired.

"Well, most of the original staff knows about the 12th floor," Claude said, sneaking a glance over his shoulder. "The disturbances, I mean. But he's been quiet for years up until about two weeks ago. It was never, ever this bad, though,"

"Did you ever report it to anyone?" Sylvester asked.

"Oh, Heavens, no!" Claude exclaimed, shuddering at the mere thought. "The owners don't even like us to talk about it. I hope we can take care of this quietly. Tonight."

"Yes, sir," Bugs said, brisk and businesslike. "Don't worry. We handle this kind of stuff all the time."

Claude smiled wanly and watched as the three of them marched across the lobby to the elevator. Daffy pushed the button with his gloved finger, demonstrating a confidence he didn't feel.

"What are you supposed to be?" asked a portly man in a suit, smoking a large cigar, waiting for the elevator. "Some kind of space cop?"

"No, we're exterminators," Daffy replied. "Somebody saw a mouse up on twelve."

The man appraised their lethal-looking equipment with bulging eyes.

"That's gotta be some mouse,"

"Bite your head off, man," Daffy told him as the elevator doors opened. "Going up?"

"I'll take the next one,"

Crowded into the elevator, their bulky equipment taking up most of the room, all three started to sweat. Up until that moment their ghost-hunting caper had been a bit of a gag. None of them had taken it totally seriously.

Now it was real.

Bugs cleared his throat as if he'd swallowed a handful of sawdust.

"You know, it just occurred to me we haven't had a completely successful test of this equipment," he said.

"I blame myself," Sylvester said, his face set in a frown.

"So do I," added Daffy.

"Well, no sense worrying about it now," Bugs told them, trying to think positive.

"Why worry?" Daffy replied. "Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear warhead on his back."

"Yep," said Bugs. "Well, let's get ready. Switch me on, Sylvester."

Sylvester did so and the elevator began to rattle and shake from side to side as the proton pack built up from a low pulsating whine to a shrill pounding crescendo. Any second they could have a compact nuclear explosion on their hands.

Daffy passed a trembling hand over his eyes, Sylvester wore his doubtful frown, and Bugs just looked sick.


	11. He Shed on Me

The twelfth-floor corridor was deserted. This made Bugs slightly more at ease. With all the high-powered atomic weaponry they were carrying, innocent bystanders could easily get hurt.

He nodded to the others and Sylvester and Daffy drew their particle throwers.

They advanced along the corridor. It was quiet. But not for long.

A squealing, rattling sound came from behind them, and in a single movement, Daffy whirled around and fired his weapon, sending a glistening, looping coil of energy searing along the corridor. And Sylvester, reacting on reflex, sprayed his beam wildly in the same general direction.

Ion particles fizzed and crackled and the air became filled with discharged neutron energy.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Bugs shouted.

Sylvester and Daffy stopped firing. The three toons peered anxiously through the smoke at the wanton destruction they had just caused: the blackened ceiling, smoldering carpet, and charred strips of wallpaper floated down, leaving wispy trails.

On her knees and hugging the carpet, an elderly cleaning woman stuck her prune-like face around the edge of the trolley and stared at them with wrinkled eyes. The contents of the trolley had been wasted. Broken bottles of cleaning fluid spilt onto the carpet and a large pack of toilet paper was on fire.

"What the Hell are you doing?" she asked.

Shamefaced, Sylvester lowered his weapon.

"Sorry," he apologized.

"I'm sorry," Daffy repeated.

"We thought you were something else," Bugs added. He turned to his fellow Quackbusters and said, "Successful test."

"I guess so," Sylvester replied.

"I think we'd better split up," Bugs told them as he reached into his jumpsuit and pulled out a silver cigarette case.

He opened the case and pulled a carrot out of it. Then, he started holding it in his mouth like it was a cigar.

"Good idea," Daffy said. "We can do more damage that way."

Bugs and Daffy stayed on the twelfth floor and went down different halls while Sylvester decided to search the floor below.

Sylvester was taking valence readings with his PKE meter. So far there was no activity – the twin antennae were retracted, the lights dead. The Dry Gulch was bigger than he'd realized. Five minutes later he'd checked two of the main corridors and still nothing.

Meanwhile, up on the twelfth, Daffy fished into his pocket and pulled out an _actual_ cigarette. And in the act of lighting it, his PKE meter swung clear across into the red.

* * *

In one corridor, Bugs heard crashes and advanced with a slow, careful tread, toward the disturbance.

Bugs poked his head around the corner and his expression changed from curiosity to disgusted shock. He quickly pulled back around the corner and flattened himself to the wall. He stood, almost rooted to the spot, his mouth gaping, trying to let out a "yipe", but to no avail.

He slowly peeked around the corner again and saw a big mound of red hair with a pair of eyes, and wearing tennis sneakers, standing behind a room-service trolley. It was feeding voraciously off scraps and leftovers, emptying plates into its cavernous maw of a mouth with savage gusto.

 _Slurp! Gulp! Gulp! Slurp!_

"Daffy?" Bugs called back down the hall behind him. "Daffy!"

But Daffy wasn't there. Bugs turned his attention back to the hairy monster. The monster finished off some goulash, licked its chops, and belched contentedly.

"Ugh! Disgusting hairball," Bugs thought. He was too disgusted to be frightened now. "I'm gonna have to take him myself."

He checked his thrower and edged closer. The red beast was too busy to notice him, cramming food and drink down its gullet.

Bugs aimed his weapon and shouted, "Hey, Frankenstein!"

Bugs fired his proton pack and the monster ran off down the hall, avoiding the curling stream of phosphorescent particles, the room service cart rolling along behind the beast as if being pulled in its wake.

Bugs missed and the streak from his proton pack tore fifty feet of wallpaper in a searing ricochet.

Bugs chased the monster down the hall, and cursed as it reached the end of the corridor. But it did not turn. It ran straight through the wall, leaving a massive hole it in, smashing dishes, scattering broken wine bottles, and crashing the cart, sending food flying everywhere.

In the neighboring corridor, Daffy was leaning against the wall having a peaceful smoke. Suddenly, his PKE meter beeped to life and the needle bounced over into the red.

The sound of rattling dishes and silverware came from the far end of the hallway, accompanied by heavy footsteps. Then, out came the horrible, giant red-orange pillar of fur.

Daffy stiffened as he picked up his radio and whispered urgently into it, "Come in, Bugs."

"Daffy!" Bugs' voice crackled over the radio. "Daffy! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!"

"It's right here, Bugs," Daffy said in a casual tone of controlled hysteria. "It's looking at me."

"He's an ugly maroon, ain't he?"

"I think he can hear you, Bugs," Daffy said nervously, backing away.

"Don't move. It won't hurt you,"

"YEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH!" Daffy screamed as the monster came charging right at him.

The monster slammed right into Daffy, knocking him over, and kept on running.

* * *

Over the radio came a terrifying shriek that curdled the marrow in Bugs's bones. He raced around the corner and saw Daffy lying on his back in the middle of the corridor, arms and legs flailing in the air like a helpless insect, and covered in safety-orange hair.

"Aagghh... Aaaagghh... Uhh..." Daffy quivered convulsively.

"Daffy, what happened? Are you okay?"

"It shed on me... it shed on me!"

"That's great! Actual physical contact! Can you move?"

"I feel so funky," Daffy replied.

"Bugs. Bugs! Bugs, where are you?" came Sylvester's shouting over the radio. "Are you all right? Come in, please!"

"Sylvester! I'm with Daffy! The monster shed on him!"

"That's great, Bugs. Save some for me. Get down here, right now! It just went into the ballroom,"

"We'll be right there,"

Bugs rushed back to the stairway and Daffy trudged after him, leaving a trail of hair in his path.


	12. Nice shooting, Sly!

Sylvester was waiting for them outside the ballroom. And so was manager Claude Cat, wringing his paws and hopping from foot to foot. He had a function due to start in fifteen minutes for two hundred people.

Daffy and Sylvester took up positions on either side of the door while Bugs brushed Claude aside and pushed the door open with his foot. Sylvester and Daffy darted swiftly into the large dark room, with Bugs trailing behind them.

"Doc, if you and your staff could please wait out here we'll take care of everything," Bugs told Claude before closing and locking the doors behind him.

Bugs took point again once they were inside the ballroom. He looked left, then right, and finally up. High above, in the center of the ornately-molded ceiling, a huge crystal chandelier gathered the room's dim light and gave it back in tiny shimmering glints. And hanging from it was the monster.

"There it is," Bugs whispered. "On the chandelier."

Sylvester rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"That's the one that got me," Daffy confirmed.

Bugs raised his thrower as Daffy and Sylvester scuttled forward. All three took aim.

"All right, Docs. Ready?" Bugs asked them. "Throw it!"

They fired their particle streams at the monster and the blast knocked a sizable chuck out of the ceiling and destroyed the chandelier. Fragments of pulverized crystal tinkled over the tables.

"I did that. I did that. That's my fault," Bugs said.

"It's okay. The table broke the fall," Daffy replied.

"Wait!" Sylvester stopped them. "There's something very important I forgot to tell you."

"What?" Daffy asked.

"Don't cross the streams,"

"Why not?"

"It would be bad,"

"I'm confused on the whole good/bad thing," Daffy said. "What do you mean, 'bad'?"

"It's hard to explain, but try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light," Sylvester said.

Bugs blinked slowly and looked away.

"Total protonic reversal," he translated.

"Okay, that's bad," Daffy replied. "Okay, important safety tip. Thanks, Sylvester. All right, Bugs, you go left. Sylvester, you go right."

They switched their attention back to the monster, standing by the buffet. The monster grabbed a wine bottle and sucked out the dregs.

"Okay, Bugs, give me one high and outside," Daffy instructed.

Bugs fired off a stream wide to the left of the monster. The monster dodged nimbly away and Bugs blasted blackened holes and scorched the silken wall-drapes into tattered strips.

"Sylvester, cut it off!" Daffy shouted.

Sylvester's marksmanship was even worse.

How much worse?

He fired with such poor accuracy that he blasted the bar and continued to fire blindly long after the monster had dodged him.

"Okay, all right. Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Daffy shouted. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Nice shooting, Sly!"

Meanwhile, outside the ballroom, the guests were wondering what was going on inside, and Claude was wincing at the sounds of crashing plaster, smashing glass, and other expensive property damage.

"I assure you, there is no problem with the ballroom," Claude lied. "It will be ready as soon as your guests are with us. Excuse me, please."

* * *

"That last throw took something out of him but he's going to move," Bugs said. "We need some room to put the trap down. Give me some room."

Sylvester and Daffy started overturning tables and throwing chairs.

"We've got to get this in the clear!" Bugs told them.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Daffy exclaimed as he grasped the tablecloth. "I've always wanted to do this." He yanked the tablecloth away. "And the flowers are still standing!"

The round tables, once covered with crisp white linen and set with gleaming silverware and sparkling goblets, were now wrecked and strewn with chunks of plaster and flaming debris.

Keeping his eyes on the monster, Bugs unhooked the containment trap from his belt. The small rectangular box, about eighteen inches long, painted with diagonal yellow-and-black warning stripes, was fed by a cable from the proton pack, and had a row of PKE indicator lights set into the titanium steel, lead-lined casing.

Very slowly and carefully, Bugs rolled the trap into the center of the room while Daffy and Sylvester maneuvered the monster into position.

"Okay, on my signal," Bugs instructed. "Sylvester, I want a confinement stream from you. Go!"

Bugs talked them through the whole process. Luckily, Sylvester had finally mastered the technique and caught the red monster in a swirling cocoon of energy particles.

"Okay, hold him steady. He's gonna move. Hold him! Daffy, go!"

The monster weaved between the streams, and Daffy and Sylvester delicately adjusting their aim to keep it boxed in.

"It's working, Bugs," Sylvester said.

"Start bringing him back. You got him," Bugs encouraged them. "Don't cross your streams."

"Maybe now you'll never shed on a duck packing a positron collider, huh?" Daffy taunted the monster.

The monster, fuming and seething, attempted to get free. The streams drifted dangerously close, within centimeters of each other.

"Daffy, shorten your stream," Sylvester said. "I don't want my face burned off."

"I'm opening the trap now," Bugs warned them. "Don't look directly into the trap."

Bugs stomped on the button and there was a loud, high-pitched electronic buzz. A beaded curtain of intense white light, in the shape of an inverted pyramid, sprung up from the device, enclosing the red haze, which writhed and squirmed inside the force field.

"I looked at the trap, Bugs," Sylvester panicked.

"Turn your streams off when I close the trap. Get ready. I'm closing it. Now!"

Bugs stomped on the button again. There was a blinding flash of pink light and the trap closed. The beaded curtain was gone and so was the monster, leaving just a puff of smoke and some wisps of carbonized particles floating to the ceiling.

For a long moment, there was absolute silence.

They stood in a limp semicircle, staring uncertainly at the trap. Then Sylvester gently bent down to inspect the trap's valence indicators. He turned and looked at the other two.

"It's in there," he confirmed.

"And so," Bugs said, with a broad and beaming grin, "having disposed of the monster, exit our heroes through the ballroom door, stage right. None the worse for their harrowing experience."

* * *

"Bert, I want that door open now!" Claude said. "Hubie, stand over there."

The Quackbusters burst from the ballroom and found two hundred guests in evening clothes milling about. A low murmur of curiosity and polite alarm rippled through the crowd at the strange appearance of the three weary, stained and disheveled toons.

"We came, we saw, we clobbered!" Daffy misquoted.

"What happened?" Claude asked. "Did you see it? What is it?"

"We got it!" Bugs said triumphantly as he proudly held up the ecto-containment trap.

Claude stepped back a pace and wafted the air as he caught a whiff of the putrid fumes drifting from the innards.

"What is it?" Claude repeated. "Will there be any more of them?"

"Doc, what you had there," Bugs told him, "was what we refer to as a focused non-terminal repeating behemoth, or a Class-Five Full-Roaming Gossamer. Real nasty one, too."

"Now, let's talk seriously," Daffy interjected as he began to write out the bill. "For the entrapment, we're gonna have to ask you for four big ones, four thousand dollars. But we are having a special this week on proton charging and storage of the beast. And that's only gonna come to one thousand dollars, fortunately."

"Five thousand dollars?" Claude replied, aghast, staring at them with bulging eyes. "I had no idea it'd be so much. I won't pay it."

"Well, that's all right," Daffy countered. "We can just put it right back in there. Can't we?"

"We certainly can, Professor Duck," Bugs added.

"No, no. No! All right! Anything," Claude said.

"Thank you so much," Daffy said, handing him the bill with a sweet smile. "Happy to be of service. Hope we can help you again."

"Coming through!" Bugs shouted. "One class-five free-roaming gossamer!"

The Quackbusters were now in business!


	13. Big News

Overnight, it seemed as if not only Acme Acres, but the entire nation, had discovered spooks and spirits. Woken up to ghosts and ghouls. Gone wild on poltergeists and precognition. Clairvoyance, corporeal vision, and things that go bump in the night.

From coast to coast, splashed across the covers of every newspaper and magazine from Hollywood to the Big Apple, on every TV network and radio station, the story caught fire as the country went on an unprecedented paranormal spree.

No one, it seemed, could get away from them. Lola Bunny sat in her living room with the _Acme Gazette_ spread out on the coffee table. There they were, right on the front page: "Ghost Fever Grips USA".

The Quackbusters had become the most famous trio of faces in the United States. Personality pieces, photo spreads and in-depth interviews in everything from _Toons_ to the _Toontown Post._

And along with the media attention, a strange phenomenon, as phantoms and psychic presences started popping out of the woodwork.

* * *

"Good morning, I'm Mary Hartless. Today, the entire Western Seaboard is alive with talk of incidents of paranormal activity. Alleged ghost-sightings and related supernatural occurrences have been reported across the entire Pacific Coast. It seems everybody is willing to bring their old ghost stories and skeletons out of the closet. Troy Grady reports from Burbank,"

"Thank you, Mary. Well, everybody has heard ghost stories around the campfire. Heck, my grandpa used to spin yarns about a demonic hotrod that would race through the town where he grew up. But now, as if some unforeseen authority had suddenly given permission, thousands of people and toons are talking about encounters they claim to have had with ghosts,"

Lola shook her head, turned off the TV, and turned to the review section. Over the radio came the voice of Larry King, temporarily drawn out of retirement, to do a special phone-in talk show:

"Hi, this is Larry King. The phone-in topic today, quacks and quackbusting. The controversy builds, more sightings are reported, and some maintain that these professional paranormal eliminators in and around America are the cause of it all. Why did everything start just when these guys went into business? Should they be allowed to carry around unlicensed proton mass drivers? And what's wrong with monsters anyway? Call us. All our lines are open,"

Lola quickly switched stations.

"Still making headlines across the country and around the world the Quackbusters are at it again, this time at the fashionable dance club The Blue Room. The 'old gray hare', Bugs Bunny, slugged it out with a pesky poltergeist then stayed to dance with the ladies who witnessed the disturbance,"

Lola killed the radio with a vicious stab of her finger.

* * *

Later that night, before all the late-night talk shows, there was a special ghost-to-ghost hookup with Zed Toppel on _Frightline_.

"Good evening, I'm Zed Toppel, and this is _Frightline._ Tonight, ghosts and ghost hunting. Is it real, or is it merely a figment of overactive imagination? A product of our troubled times. Our guest is the noted metaphysician Mr. Daffy Duck, who may be able to shed some light on this otherwise dark corner of our national obsession with the supernatural,"

Lola groaned and covered her eyes as a big close-up of Daffy's face filled the screen.

"Thank you, Zed," Daffy said. "Daffy Duck's the name, supernatural is my game. Folks, ghosts do exist. Monsters, vampires, even itsy-bitsy elephants only five and a quarter inches tall, they're all real."

Daffy was very earnest in his response.

"They're all over the place and that's why we're offering this vitally important service to people everywhere,"

He smirked into the camera and wound up for the hard sell.

"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We have the tools, we have the talent. No job is too big, no fee is too big. We're ready for anything!"

"Well," Zed chipped in merrily. "As they say in TV, I'm sure there's one big question on everybody's mind, and I imagine you are the duck to answer that. How is Elvis, and have you seen him lately?"


	14. Bugs and Lola

Bugs was bushed.

He stood by the marble water fountain outside the Tex Avery Gymnasium, his tired mind fantasizing.

The last assignment he'd been called on was a peculiar one. He mulled over the memory, reliving it pleasurably in his mind.

He'd been called out to, of all places, the single officers' quarters at the old fort. He and Sylvester had taken the call. So, they'd raced up there, strobe lights on, siren blaring, the whole nine yards, and set about tracking down a spook that was said to be haunting the barracks.

While Sylvester checked the basement, Bugs investigated the officers' sleeping quarters. One room had been painstakingly restored with period furniture, mirrors, drapes, even a four-poster bed. Very impressive.

Fascinated, Bugs poked around with the PKE meter, but hadn't come up with anything. He checked out the large ornate wardrobe, packed with dress uniforms and sabers in racks, and still nothing. He shook his head and gave the room a final once-over.

The four-poster bed looked wide and soft and very inviting.

He tested his weight on it, squeezing the thick spring mattress. Then, he unbuckled his harness and laid the proton pack on the carpet. He slid the leather tongue of his belt out of the buckle, slipped out of his jumpsuit, and stretched out, naked, on the bed.

Bliss.

He closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep.

It was the next part, whether he was awake or dreaming, he wasn't sure about. A pink mist started to form on the ceiling. At first it was swirling, shapeless, and he could remember watching it slither downwards and seeping through the heavy brocade canopy over the bed.

Then it began to take form, and assume the form of a long vaporous shroud hanging over the entire length of his body. Bugs wasn't the least frightened or alarmed. He simply lay watching the pink apparition hovering inches above his face.

And a pair of beautiful eyes looking into his. They belonged to a lovely creature, a lost soul perhaps, with a voluptuous body that was forming and defining itself even as he watched.

Bugs held his breath as the vision pressed closer upon him. For a moment, he thought he might be smothered. But the ghostly, beautiful face slid down his body and out of sight. Then curled into a puff of pink mist and evaporated into thin air.

Bugs propped himself up on his elbows. He was equally perplexed and disappointed. But _something_ was there. He could feel it. His throat went dry and tight. He couldn't breathe. He stared.

The fur between his legs shifted and his shaft began to become erect.

Unable to move, Bugs watched all this happening with stupefied amazement. He didn't know whether he ought to be scared or not. He decided he wasn't. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He was starting to enjoy it. Very much.

Bugs lay on the bed, closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

* * *

Alone, Lola probably wouldn't have seen him. But coming out of the door of the gym, listening with half an ear to the opinions of her teammates, her eyes roved over the open plaza.

"I don't know where they get these assistant coaches," Lola told Melissa. "Someone should tell him it's not going to do him much good to scream at the players."

"Well, I don't think that the man is competent to coach a basketball team," Melissa replied.

And there stood Bugs, by the edge of the fountain, in a blue suit coat and black bowtie. In spite of herself, Lola gave a little private smile. But why? Didn't she find the guy brash and objectionable?

Maybe.

But not as pretentious and predictable as most of the people and toons that she hung out with.

"Um, could you wait here a minute?" Lola asked.

"Huh? Uh, sure,"

Excusing herself, Lola walked over, arranging her face carefully to convey an impression of cool politeness.

"Professor Bunny. This is a surprise,"

"That was a great game," he greeted her with a cocky smile. "And yes, I was in there. The Warner Brothers have their own private box. You're one of the best slow forwards I've ever seen."

"Oh, thank you,"

Noticing the surprise mixed with the skeptical twitch of her eyebrow, he replied, "I don't have to take this abuse from you. I got hundreds of people lined up, dying to abuse me."

"I know. You're an even bigger celebrity now," she said shrewdly. "So, are you here because you have some information for me on my case?"

Bugs, still in love, looked at her. He wanted to take her in his arms.

Instead, he noticed the young female duck, tall and pale with fair blonde hair, lingering off to the side.

"Who's the maroon?"

Lola glanced behind her to where her teammate was scuffing her webbed feet into cracks in the sidewalk.

"That 'maroon' happens to be one of the newest recruits for the city's female basketball team," Lola replied.

Turning his back on her, Bugs strolled away with Lola, putting the fountain between him and Melissa.

Lola turned to Bugs once again.

"Do you have some explanation of what happened in my apartment?"

"Yes, but I would prefer to tell it to you in private,"

"Can't you tell me now?"

"Okay," Bugs said as he pulled a thick leather-bound book from behind his back and held it up for Lola to see. "I found the name 'Woe'." He flipped it open to a marked page. "Apparently, it refers to an evil scientist whose records only go as far back as 1952."

Bugs watched her mouth as she read, "'Woe' was the mistress of Dr. Frankenbeans."

"'Frankenbeans,'" Bugs said with a frown, "was very big in the scientific community."

Lola looked at him curiously.

"What's he doing in my refrigerator?"

"I'm still working on that," Bugs replied, closing the book and slipping it behind his back and back into hammerspace. "I think if we could meet Friday night, I'm thinking around nine, we could get together and talk about it, exchange information."

"I can't see you Friday night," Lola said. "I'm busy."

"Miss Bunny, do you think I enjoy giving up my evenings to spend time with clients?" Bugs asked with an air of disgruntlement. "No. I am making a special exception in your case because... I respect you. It's corny, but I respect you as an athlete. And as a lady."

Lola thought for a moment.

"All right. Since you put it that way,"

"I'll meet you at your place. I'll cook dinner and we can read after we eat,"

Lola nodded. She still didn't trust him, but she couldn't help but like him. She found him engaging and refreshing compared the heavy low-brow company she was used to.

"I've got to go now," she said, giving him a brief smile and walking back to her teammate, who had been tapping her feet and giving Bugs the "evil eye" for the past several minutes.

"I'll see you Friday!" he called after her.

"Who the Hell was that?" Melissa asked.

"He's just a friend," Lola said.

"A friend?"

"An old friend,"

"Well, what does he do?"

"He's a teacher," Lola replied.

Bugs waved at them and called out, "I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you. I hope you get better soon!"

And with arms daintily extended, he twirled on his toes in a pretty pirouette around the empty square.


	15. Recruiting Porky

"Quackbusters, please hold,"

Penelope cancelled the light and took another call.

"Quackbusters, please hold,"

The phone had been ringing off the hook since the Quackbusters' escapade at the Dry Gulch Hotel. The panel of winking lights and insistent beeps hadn't let up since Penelope arrived at the office that morning.

"Quackbusters, please hold," she said as she searched for a pencil with one paw while she flipped to a fresh page on the pad with the other. "Quackbusters, hold please. Quackbusters, can I help you? A sea monster is living in your Jacuzzi?" she asked, writing rapidly. "Uh-huh. Just a minute, let me see... Well, it looks like the earliest time we could get to you would be a week from Friday."

Penelope sighed and raised her eyes to the short and chubby pig in a blue suit jacket and red bowtie sitting in the corner filling out a job application. He gazed over and met her look with a sympathetic shrug before going back to the form.

"I'm sorry, we're totally booked until then. All I can suggest to you is that you stay at a hotel until we can get to you. Yes, thank you,"

She took another call.

"Quackbusters, Penelope Pussycat speaking... Yes. Why yes, we do. We'd be happy to send you our free brochure..."

Penelope handled all the other calls with the same brisk efficiency and then slumped back in her chair. Finally, she had reached the end of the list. Thankfully, for a few minutes at least, there was a respite.

Porky got up and brought across his completed application form. He moved lightly and gracefully for a pig, and stood gazing down at her with a pensive look that bordered on suspicious.

"The ad in the paper just said, 'Help Wanted,'" he said. "Wh-eh-whu-eh-wh-what's the job?"

"I really don't know, Mr. Pig," Penelope apologized. "They just told me to take applications and ask you these questions."

She picked up a sheet of paper and adjusted her glasses before reading out the list in a flat monotone.

"Do you believe in ghosts, goblins, ghouls, gremlins, leprechauns, spooks, the Blob, the Bogeyman, Frankenstein's monster, mummies, Dracula, vampires, werewolves, the Wolfman, she-wolves, UFOs, men from Mars, telepathy, telekinesis, ESP, clairvoyance, black and/or white magic, Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster and/or the Theory of Atlantis?"

Truth be told Porky didn't believe in any of that stuff, especially not leprechauns. Frankly, he thought it was all a lot of nonsense.

But he was in desperate need of a job, so he said, "If there's a sa-eh-sal-eh-salar-steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you eh-say-seh-eh-tell me."

Daffy swung the Quackbuster mobile into the garage bay and cut the engine. The alarm bell and sirens had drilled a hole through his skull. The sounds had imprinted onto his brain and they would. Not. Cease.

Pale, bleary-eyed, with a three-day stubble and almost too tired to even think, he moaned as he slid out from behind the wheel and pulled himself from the vehicle, slowly straightening up as if his bones would snap at any moment. Bugs climbed wearily out of the other side, dangling three traps at arms' length, careful not to let them touch his blue suit (Daffy had picked him up from the Tex Avery Gymnasium after his meeting with Lola).

A cloud of pungent green fumes surrounded the now blackened and dented metallic casings. The valence detectors flashed red, confirming that they had recently had close encounters of the spiritual kind, which was plainly evident from the state of Bugs and Daffy.

And the Quackbuster Mobile looked like it had been through a major war and only made it by the skin of its bumpers.

Daffy slipped off his proton pack and groaned again.

"Is this the tenth call in the past twenty-four hours, or the twenty-fourth in the last ten?" he thought numbly.

He had **_long_** lost track of time and numbers. Two weeks ago, there wasn't a reliable sighting of a ghost or ghoul in Acme Acres. Then, all of a sudden, it was like they were growing on trees.

"I gotta get some sleep," Bugs told Daffy. "I feel like Hell."

"You look like it, too," Daffy added bluntly.

"I do?"

"Well, you've looked better. You didn't used to look this bad,"

"Can you hold, please?" Penelope said into the phone.

"Here's the invoice on the Burbank job," Daffy told Penelope. "She paid with a Visa."

Penelope took it and impaled it on a spike before handing a thick sheaf of work orders to Bugs.

"Here's tonight's worksheet," she said.

"Oh, great," Bugs groaned. "Two more free repeaters."

"And this is Porky Pig. He's here about the job,"

"Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny," Daffy said as he stuck out his hand, which Porky shook.

"Follow me, please," Bugs said as Penelope returned to the phone.

"Quackbusters, sorry to make you wait," she said.

Daffy stayed upstairs to have a cigarette while Bugs led Porky downstairs to the basement storage facility.

On their way down, Bugs glanced through Porky's job application. He gave a low appreciative whistle.

"Very impressive resume," he said. "Mr. Pig, as you may have heard, we locate ghosts and spirits, trap them and remove them from people's homes, offices and places of worship."

"Yeah, I he-eh-he-eh-he-heard," Porky said. "Now, tell me what you eh-re-eh-re-eh-really do."


	16. EPA Martian

"There's someone from the Earth Protection Agency here to see you," Penelope told Daffy. "He's waiting in your office."

Daffy frowned.

"EPA? What the Hell do they want?"

"I don't know," Penelope replied shortly. "All I do know is that I've been working for two weeks without a break and you promised you'd hire more help."

"Penelope," Daffy said gently, "anyone with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a topflight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries. Are you gonna answer that?"

"I've quit better jobs than this,"

The panel lit up again and she hit the switch with a lethal swipe.

"Quackbusters! What do you want?"

The dinky little man from the Earth Protection Agency was sitting on the couch when Daffy walked into his office.

Already, Daffy smelt trouble. He was tired and he didn't like the little man's helmet. He didn't like the little man's tightly-fitting Roman war gear. And when the little man stood up, Daffy liked even less the tennis shoes, big dark eyes, and black mouth-less face.

So, Daffy remained cool and polite and asked, "Can I help you?"

"I'm Marvin. Marvin the Martian," the little man said, extending a gloved, claw-like hand.

"Martian, eh?" Daffy asked with a terrific lack of enthusiasm. "Interesting."

"I represent the Earth Protection Agency,"

"Great. How's it going down there?"

"I was about to solve the Earth's fuel problem,"

"Oh, and how did you plan to do that?"

"Quite simple: I planned to blow it up," Marvin said flatly. "Are you Daffy Duck?"

"Yes, I am _Professor_ Duck... at least for now. I'm in the process of changing my name to Dodgers. Duck Dodgers,"

"And exactly what are you a professor of, Mr. Duck?"

"I have Ph.D.'s in psychology and parapsychology,"

"I see. And now you catch ghosts,"

"Yes,"

The Martian wandered around the office, poking into corners and scanning the press-cutting board on the wall, taking it in, summing it up, and writing it off.

"And how many ghosts have you caught, Mr. Duck?"

"I am not at liberty to say,"

"And where do you put these ghosts once you catch them?"

"In a storage facility," Daffy said stolidly.

"And would this storage facility be located on these premises?"

"Yes,"

"And may I _see_ this storage facility?"

"No," Daffy said quietly. "You may not."

Without being invited, the Martian sat down in the chair across from Daffy's desk.

"And why not, Mr. Duck?"

"Because you did not use the magic word," Daffy said in a gentle, flippant tone.

Marvin sighed.

"What is the magic word, Mr. Duck?" he asked, his patience obviously wearing thin.

"'Please,'" Daffy retorted, as if the Martian was stupid.

"May I _please_ see the storage facility, Mr. Duck?"

"Why do you want to see it?"

"Because I'm curious," the Martian said, finally thrusting his thin black neck forward and fixing Daffy with a cold, dark stare. "I want to know more about what you do here. There have been a lot of wild stories in the media and I would like to assess any and all possible environmental impact from your operation. For instance, the presence of noxious fumes and possibly hazardous waste chemicals in your basement. Now I am a very busy Martian, so you can either willingly show me what is down there, or I come back with a court order."

Daffy's tiredness had finally given way to an implacable rage.

He hated ultimatums and he would be damned if he was going to give in to this thin-necked, bucket-headed pipsqueak.

He stood up, placed his hands on his desk, leaned menacingly across and gave it to Marvin full in the face.

"Go ahead! Go get a court order!" he yelled. "And I'll sue your helmet for wrongful prosecution!"

If the Martian had a mouth, it would be curled into a satisfied smirk.

"Have it your way, Mr. Duck," Marvin said.

And then he left.

Meanwhile, in the basement, Porky was having a hard time telling himself that these guys weren't for real. What knocked him through the loop was the casual, almost matter-of-fact way that Bugs and Sylvester went about their trade. As if trapping ghosts and containing them was the most natural supernatural thing in the world.

Bugs explained to Porky, in great detail, how the storage unit worked. He held a steaming containment trap in one hand, while the other hand yanked down a steel lever on a red box against the concrete wall.

"This is where we store all the ghosts, monsters and Gossamers that we trap," Bugs explained. "It's very simple. A loaded trap here. Open, unlock the system. Insert the trap. Release. Close and lock the system."

There was an oiled whine of internal hydraulics, followed by a solid mechanical clunk. In the wall of concrete blocks, reaching from floor to ceiling, a small hatch about as thick and substantial as the door of a safe, slid open, revealing a rectangular boxlike slit.

Porky watched with disbelief as Bugs inserted the trap into the slit and activated the lever, shutting the heavy steel hatch. Then he pressed a couple of buttons.

"Set the entry grid. Neutronize the field,"

Porky cocked his head as he listened. From within came a snapping and crackling, like the sound of bugs being fried. And then silence.

"And when the light is green, the trap is clean," Bugs said, holding up his empty hands like a magician finishing a disappearing trick. "The ghost is incarcerated here in our custom-made storage facility. Now, you try it."

Porky repeated the procedure, opened the hatch, removed the trap, and tossed it into a bin marked, "For Recharge."

Then Bugs gestured to a hooded viewing port, about the size of a small TV monitor, and Porky peered in through the smoked glass screen.

If he needed a graphic depiction of Hell, this was it.

A graveyard mist hung in thick streamers. Spectral shapes, looking lost and lonely, wafting aimlessly to and fro. Vaguely human forms standing desolate, staring into eternity. Strange lights flickering, crating and eerie, unearthly light, this dimly illuminated bleak limbo of lost souls.

Porky pulled away and wiped the icy sweat from the back of his neck with a trembling hand. These guys were not fooling. The stories in the papers were all true.

"And there are the numerous fringe benefits, such as our generous employee insurance policies," Bugs said, drawing Porky's attention away from the sight he'd just seen. "You may rest assured that if anything happens to you, your loved ones will be taken care of. So, do you still want the job?"

"Oh, y-eh-ye-eh-yes, sir," Porky stammered. "I would be honored to join you and your team of para-eh-par-eh-para-of ghost exterminators."

"You're hired," Bugs stated, shaking Porky's hand. "Congratulations and welcome aboard."

Sylvester cast a doubtful glance at the storage facility and shook his head.

"I'm worried, Bugs," he said. "It's getting crowded in there. I have charted every psychic occurrence in the entire area over the past two years and the graph I came up with, combined with all my recent data, points to something big on the horizon."

"Eh-wuh-eh-whu-what do you mean 'big'?" Porky asked.

Sylvester took a carrot (about nine inches long and weighing roughly 72 grams) from Bugs's plate and held it up.

"Let's say that this carrot represents the _normal_ amount of psychokinetic, or ghost, energy in Acme Acres at any point in time," he explained. "According to this morning's sample, it would be a carrot four thousand feet tall, weighing just over a metric ton."

Bugs's eyes widened at the image Sylvester's words created.

"That's a b-eh-buh-beh-eh-massive carrot," Porky commented.

"We could be on the verge of a fourfold cross-rip," Sylvester went on. "A PKE surge of incredible, even dangerous, proportions."

Daffy came down the stairs, and he did not look happy.

"I just had a visit from the Earth Protection Agency," he told them. "How's the grid holding up?"

"Not good," Sylvester answered.

"Tell him about eh-the-eh-th-Bugs's carrot," Porky said.

"What about Bugs's carrot?"


	17. Devils Drag Lola

A dark night in Acme Acres.

The sun had set, the air was tinged with anticipation, and the full moon was on the rise through banks of dark clouds scattered across a star-studded sky. Shadows passed like wraiths over the towers of steel and glass, and deepened the gloom of the concrete canyons.

A deeper, darker shadow moved over the upper west side of the city and gathered above the high-rise Acme Arms apartment building.

There, it hovered and thickened, winding about itself in tortuous coils. There was something almost sentient about it, as if it contained a presence with a purpose.

At the top of the building, a dull pulsating glow began to emanate from the polished dome of the temple, casting an eerie light over the bronze doors, the marble pillars, and the pair of huge carved beasts rampant, on their plinths.

With paws raised, lips drawn back into frozen snarls, they resembled the Tasmanian Devil.

A few grains of dust sifted from the raised paw of one of the creatures. A fine crack appeared. The solid stone seemed to tremble. And all at once there was a clearly audible sound of cracking as the stone crumbled away to reveal the black curled claws.

The claws twitched and slowly flexed.

The crack in stone spread along the paw as fragments fell to the floor. Then whole massive chunks as the beast – the Tasmanian Devil – came slowly to life.

Its dead stone eye blinked open.

Its huge baleful eye.

With slit pupil.

Glowing red.

Evil.

* * *

As the elevator door slid open, Lola heard music radiating from Pepé's apartment. The night of the party. Lola hadn't given it another thought since Pepé mentioned it.

Lola crept quickly and quietly along the hallway with a light tread. With any luck Pepé would be too engrossed with his guests to be on the lookout for her – and he wouldn't be able to hear a thing with all the activity going on.

Luck was not on her side. Either that or Pepé had a Lola Bunny detector grafted to his brain. She hadn't gone two paces past his apartment when the door opened and Pepé popped his out. His face was flushed and excited, his eyes lit up as he spied Lola creeping along the corridor.

"Oh, Lola, it's you!" he exclaimed.

He was wearing a red silk smoking jacket, which complimented his pressed black slacks.

Lola stopped mid-step, and with an effort conjured up a smile.

"Hello, Pepé,"

"You're missing a wonderful soirée!"

Lola hesitated.

"I would, Pepé, but I have a date coming over,"

Pepé stepped out into the hall and looked her right in the eye. He was obviously crestfallen.

"You made other plans... tonight?"

"I'm sorry, Pepé, I totally forgot,"

Pepé, trying to act like he wasn't hurt, brushed it off.

"Oh, it's all right. You can bring him along," he said.

"All right. Maybe we'll stop by, okay?"

"That's great!" Pepé beamed as he returned to the party. "We're going to do some ballroom dancing, play a little Twister..."

From the wide windows, the sky over the park was dark with purple thunderclouds. In the distance, beyond the river, forked lightning flickered like a serpent's tongue. A storm was gathering.

The apartment was oppressively warm. Lola removed her jacket and tossed it over the back of her favorite armchair. She walked over to the lamp and switched it on as her coat fell to the floor.

She removed her figure-hugging tank top and dropped it by the bedroom door, strands of blonde hair adhering to her damp forehead. Then, she reached down and slowly pushed down her shorts.

Very slowly.

She sank into the armchair, closing her eyes with a deep, luxurious sigh of contentment.

Practice was great, but this was even better.

"Relax, shower, dress," she thought.

Still plenty of time before Bugs arrived. Lola smiled to herself.

She still needed to decide what to wear but a torpid drowsiness weighed heavily on her.

The sound of the phone jerked her awake. Silently cursing, Lola cradled the receiver against her shoulder.

"Hello? Oh, hi, Mom... I've been busy. Well... No, everything's fine... Yeah. No, just that one time..."

Lola listened to the tinny rattle of the voice, nodding her head.

"Oh, I am... I will... I won't. Mom, I have to go. I have a date... Yes... No, no one you know. It's... Well, he's a teacher. A professor, in fact. Yes, well, I'll have to let you know. Okay. All right. Good. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I promise. Give my love to Dad. Right. Bye,"

She hung up the phone and leaned back, eyes closed again, the pool of lamplight cascading over her slender, naked, reclining form. Her breasts rhythmically rising and falling. The rest of the room in deep shadow.

Suddenly, seeping through the cracks around the kitchen door, an eerie light began to glow.

It became brighter, sending beams of light into the shadowy room like tiny searchlights.

A beam fell across Lola's closed eyelids. She frowned in her sleep and stirred uneasily. She opened her eyes and looked towards the kitchen door, wide awake.

She stared at the door, framed in a shimmering, crimson glow. And as she watched, the imprint of sharp curved claws appeared, trying to tear through the door with demonic fury. The door began to bend, buckling under the onslaught of the tearing claws.

"Oh, shit!" she gasped.

Lola bolted up, and as she did so a brown, furry, inhuman hand ripped out of the cushion behind her and clamped itself across her mouth.

The cushion ripped again and another claw-like hand tore through the upholstery and grabbed her around the neck. Again, the cushion ripped and another hand clutched her naked breast, while yet other ripped through and grabbed her around her waist. The cushion ripped one last time and another hand shoved two of its fingers into her vagina.

Lola screamed, bucking wildly in the chair, trying to pull the brown paws from her body.

The armchair swung around and faced the kitchen door. Lola's eyes widened in mute horror as the kitchen door swung open, revealing a fiery chamber. And deep within the inferno, she glimpsed the blood-red eyes of the Tasmanian Devil.

Lifting its huge black snout, the hanging flesh around its slavering jaw crinkled in what seemed to be a smiling snarl. Its paws raised, pointed claws glinting, outstretched towards her.

Lola felt the scorching heat as she was propelled forward, pinned to the chair and gagged by the powerful clutching hands.

Then the chair, the clutching hands, and Lola disappeared through the doorway and were swallowed up in the fiery depths of the chamber.

* * *

The storm had come. Racing in from the East, the dark clouds massed over the city. A flash of lighting streaked across the sky as thunderbolts rolled over the temple.

The bronze door reflected the lightning in flickering gleams, illuminating the empty stone pedestals, now strewn with fragments of pulverized rock, where the creatures once stood.

Once. No longer.


	18. Who Brought the Dog?

Pepé stood in his cramped kitchenette, in a tiny alcove off the living room. His apartment had none of the spaciousness of Lola's, or its spectacular view of Acme Park. Instead, it overlooked the lightwell in the center of the building. From his balcony, Pepé had the privilege of watching the other residents come and go.

Among the guests were Michael Keaton, Francis Pumphandle (who everyone called "Pip"), Mr. T, Chicken Boo, Steven Spielberg, and two of Johnny Bravo's former girlfriends, Fluffy the Werewolf and Carol the Antelope.

Couples and trios sat in isolation in corners of the room as the sounds of a piano concerto drowned out most of the communication, and Fluffy drifted across the room and started peering wistfully into the tropical fish tank as if she might be tempted to dive in and join them.

And this was the low point of the evening.

Everyone was having a wonderful time. What would have made it perfect was if Lola was there. Pepé, who was serving Hors d'oeuvres, hoped she would come.

"Caviar... Camembert..." he offered. "Enjoy."

He waved to Carol as he danced his way to the buffet.

Keaton and Pip were helping themselves to the lavish spread of foreign cheeses while Mr. T, who was wearing a loose bow tie, bit into a Crêpe Suzette.

As well as fancy cuisine and wines, there were Bugles stuffed with cream cheese, Ants on a Log (which were celery sticks filled with peanut butter and raisins on top) and Combos (cheese-filled pretzels).

Pepé switched trays and started bussing a bowl of chocolate-covered candies around the room.

"Have a bonbon," he said. "They're from Spain."

Keaton, Chicken Boo, Fluffy and two lady supermodels took one.

"This is good," Fluffy said.

"It contains _rhinoceros horn,_ " Pepé replied.

Keaton coughed slightly and wiped his mouth with his napkin, concealing the chewed bits of bonbon, and threw the napkin into a nearby trash can. One of the supermodel's eyes went wide as she covered her mouth with her hand to keep herself from throwing up. The other, who hadn't bitten into her bonbon, put it back in the bowl. Chicken Boo had eaten his whole and just blinked, like nothing had happened. And Fluffy looked at her half-eaten bonbon, blinked, and ate the rest of it with a shrug.

Carol tugged at Pepé's arm with her mouth (being an antelope she didn't have hands) and got his attention.

"Where-where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm going home," she said.

Pepé dropped the bowl of bonbons and rushed to the door, throwing himself between it and Carol.

"Must you go, my little wide-eyed doe?" he asked. "You are too exquisite to leave so soon. I beseech you, don't go." When Carol would not yield, Pepé gave a little sigh and said, "Very well. You win. Go."

Pepé opened the door for her just as the doorbell rang. And he opened it to an intoxicating vision.

A tall, buxom white mink with a fluffy blonde tail and long flowing hair, blazing eyes, and wearing a scandalous red dress with a slit up the right leg all the way to her thigh.

"Minerva!" Pepé exclaimed. "You got my invitation. Welcome. Please, come in," he said before kissing her hand.

Carol left and Pepé closed the door behind her.

"Who was that?" Minerva asked him.

"Oh, that was just Carol," he replied. "Allow me to take your wrap."

"No, thank you," Minerva said.

"I insist. What kind of host would I be if I did not attend to my guests? Please, permit me, your coat. Do not make me beg,"

Minerva finally gave in and Pepé took her coat.

"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Pepé asked. "Now, please, make yourself at home."

Minerva made her way through the hotbed of activity to the white settee in the living room while Pepé sambaed over to his bedroom to dump Minerva's coat.

He pushed open the door as he continued talking to his guests, and tossed the coat on to the bed, not even noticing the Tasmanian Devil that was sitting on it, saliva dripping from its pointed, gaping fangs, which gleamed in the light from the living room.

Monstrous claws splayed out, it stood four-square, looking at Pepé with saucer-sized red eyes, the pupils black and slit.

The coat landed on its head, carelessly thrown by the unheeding and unsuspecting skunk, who closed the door and returned to his party.

"Sit, please," Pepé told Minerva.

She sat upon the settee and he poured her a glass of Champagne.

"You know, Champagne is not Champagne unless it comes from the province of Champagne," Pepé said, as he sat beside her. "Life is too short to quaff anything but Champagne... and Red Bull. No one can long resist the lure of those delicate bubbles. Each one, like the story of one's life, whispering the same message of love. Would you like to hear my story?"

Minerva shook her head.

"Okay. Here it goes. I have been in love only once. You bring to mind golden memories... of her. Sadly, she is gone. She was run over by a van. My cousin, Pitu Le Pew, was driving. She fell out, and he backed over her... Several times. He forgot the van was in reverse. But I don't blame him. I come from a long line of terrible drivers... Every moment without her was an eternity for me. I lived in her chateau for several months until her rotten kids kicked me out. Why? I pissed away her fortune,"

The guests were taken aback by this.

"But I have done well for myself, as you all can tell," he said, motioning to his apartment. "Selling perfumes, cosmetics, no animals used in **_or_** tested on, and planning weddings. So, here is to life!" he said, raising his glass.

"To life!" everyone chorused before clinking their glasses together.

"Impetuous," Pepé said after taking a sip. "I recall the first time I saw you from my terrace, coming in and out of the building, in those backless heels," he said, gazing deeply into Minerva's heaving chest. "Forgive me if my hungry eyes feast on the banquet of your _sumptuous décolletage._ I must admit, I find you irresistible," he said, finally looking her in the eye. "As irresistible as I'm sure you find me, my little Arctic hushpuppy... You know what really gets me mellow?"

"Cuddling?" Minerva asked in a husky voice with a seductive smile.

"You are a naughty little mink," Pepé thought with an equally devilish grin.

"No! Not that," he replied, still smiling. "Aroma therapy."

He set his Champagne glass on the coffee table in front of them. He took a tiny glass bottle from the table, uncorked it and said, "Smell this."

She paused for a moment before she did.

"Cinnamon," she said.

"Soothing, no?" Pepé said, picking up another bottle. "And this one... Jasmine. Mmm? So nice. Like a summer evening. And this one? Vanilla."

Pepé returned the bottles to the table. Then he took Minerva's hand.

"You know, your hands say everything about you. So fine and delicate. Allow me one brief glimpse,"

She did.

"See here? Your life line is very long. So is your fate line, but most intriguing of all is your love line,"

And he kissed her palm.

Suddenly, a roar from the bedroom locked all the guests in an instant freeze-frame.

Words were cut off in midair, gestures turned into waxworks, and two female supermodels dropped their Hors d'oeuvres.

Everyone stared at Pepé as he stood up and asked, "Okay, who brought the dog?"

The bedroom door disintegrated in a shower of splinters and sheared timber. Like a charging rhino, the Tasmanian Devil smashed straight through it with such force that it skidded halfway across the room, ripping the carpet to shreds.

Leaping in all directions, the screaming guests scrambled frantically from the snarling beast. It whipped its thick, muscled neck around, glowing red eyes scanning the room.

And they stopped on Pepé Le Pew.

With a frightened smile on his face, Pepé yelped and ran for the door. The Tasmanian Devil's jaws gaped in a snarling grin. Its haunches bunched as it prepared to pounce.

Panicked, Pepé wrenched the door open, dove into the corridor, and slammed the door behind him. And not a split second too soon as the Tasmanian Devil gave the door the same treatment and smashed it to smithereens.

Pepé ran down the hall and the elevator doors opened. As the beast charged toward him, Pepé frantically hit the button and the doors slid shut.

* * *

The doorman touched the peak of his cap as the cab pulled away from the curb and returned to his station outside the revolving doors.

A deliveryman approached the entrance and Pepé bounded out of the building, screaming, "There's a wild animal loose in my apartment!" and without stopping dashed through the traffic and leaped over the wall across the street.

"Now he's got wild animals up there," the doorman muttered to himself, shaking his head as he watched Pepé vanish into the dark undergrowth of Acme Park.

The Tasmanian Devil hit the deliveryman square between the shoulder blades, knocking him flat. In two gigantic leaps, the snarling beast was across the street, over the wall and out of sight.

The chase was on.


	19. Terror on the Town

Pepé ran for his life. He had no idea where he was going, and really didn't care. Just as long as that – thing didn't get him.

He ran through the park, miraculously not tripping over roots or getting swiped by branches. He came to a dark underpass and staggered into it. Ahead he saw a twinkle of lights, and realized it was the swank Acme Park Restaurant.

The wide picture windows poured a blaze of golden light on the asphalt courtyard.

Inside, the elite of Burbank and Hollywood were dining in an atmosphere of elegant refinement, the superb food and wine complimented by the muted chords of a grand piano in the corner. Lithe waiters in tails swiveled to and fro, bearing silver platters.

Pepé had eaten there many times, and they knew him well.

Gasping, Pepé ran up to the windows and searched for the door. He found it and tugged on the handle. Locked. He ran along the side of the building, turning a corner and found another door. Also locked.

Panicking again, he pressed his hands to the glass, frantically trying to get someone's, anyone's, attention. Unfortunately, everyone was too busy, or snobby, to notice.

He hammered his fist on the glass, his face contorted into a grimace of terror. Then, he spun around as a rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs came from the bushes. It sounded like something large and very heavy moving through the undergrowth.

First, he heard the throaty, grumbling growl.

Then he saw the pair of black-slit, glowing red eyes.

Finally, its shadow fell across the paved courtyard. Pepé stood paralyzed with fear as the lumbering form of the Tasmanian Devil advanced towards him out of the dark.

Pepé fell back, spread against the light of the window. He opened his mouth and let out, in a barely audible voice, "Mother..."

The beast snarled, then roared, and pounced.

The elegant diners finally looked up, hearing the muffled cries for help above the piano. For a brief moment, their chatter ceased as they listened to the savage roar from outside, followed by a violent threshing and a pitifully plaintive cry, and finally silence.

And they returned to their expensive salmon, trout and chocolate mousse as if nothing had happened.


	20. Bugs's Date with Woe

A man in a deliveryman's uniform with a badly bruised face was being helped into an ambulance while two cops were holding back a small crowd of bystanders when Bugs arrived outside Lola's building.

He was dressed in a black tuxedo jacket, with a white collared shirt and bowtie, and carrying a bouquet of red roses. He didn't wear pants or shoes, but if he did, the pants would have been pressed and the shoes would have been polished. He paused before pushing through the revolving door and asked one of the officers what had happened.

"Some moron brought a cougar to a party and it went berserk," he was informed.

Bugs crossed the lobby and stepped into the elevator. He got out at the twenty-second floor and walked down the hallway. The splintered remains of a door were scattered over the carpet. Bugs looked at them pensively for a moment, and then carried on to Lola's apartment.

He knocked on the door and when there was no answer, he knocked again. The door slowly swung open and Lola – or somebody resembling Lola – was revealed.

Bugs stood and gazed at this new Lola. Her eyes were large, dark and lustrous. Her lips were wet and parted. Her ears hung down, one over her right eye, the other over her naked left shoulder. Most of her breasts were visible above the thin, strapless, scarlet silk dress that followed every curve and crevice of her body.

"This is a different look for you," Bugs said pleasantly.

Lola stood with her shoulders held back, her chin lifted haughtily, and her eyes were huge and darkly luminescent.

Bugs could hear the breath whispering in her nostrils, quivering with passionate sensuality.

Lola looked at him as if he were a stranger. She raised her head imperiously and said in a throaty whisper, "Hello, tall, gray and handsome."

She invited him in and Bugs stepped inside.

He noticed the state of the apartment. The frame around the kitchen door was charred and blackened with soot, and one of the armchairs had gaping holes in its upholstery and the springs were sticking out.

Bugs turned to face Lola again and asked, "And you are?"

"I am Woe," she announced. "I am the Mistress."

"What are we doing tonight, doll?" Bugs asked.

"We must prepare for the coming of Dr. Frankenbeans, the Evil Scientist,"

Lola turned to face Bugs and held out both arms to him. Bugs took her hands in his, and she led him into the bedroom. Her breasts rose and fell voluptuously as she lay down on the bed.

"Do you want this body?" Lola asked brazenly, the breath rasping in her throat.

"Is this a trick question?" Bugs asked.

"Take me now..." Lola implored him.

"I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people," Bugs said as he freed himself from her powerful grip.

Her hands wrapped fiercely around his neck and she dragged him down on top of her. Her lips fastened on his with supernatural lust.

"Actually," Bugs panted. "It's more of a guideline than a rule."

Lola held his head in the palms of her hands.

"I want you inside me,"

"I don't know," Bugs said. "It sounds like you've got at least two people in there already. It may be a little crowded."

Gently, he pushed her back down on the bed.

"I want you to close your eyes and relax,"

Obediently, Lola shut her eyelids. Her breathing slackened and became even.

"Lie down there. Relax. Put your hands on your chest," Bugs said softly. "What I'd really like to do is talk to Lola. I want to talk to Lola."

"I am Woe. I am..."

"Right, you're the Mistress, I know," Bugs said softly. "But I want Lola. Now, I'm going to speak to Lola. And I want Lola to answer. Lola, it's Bugs."

Lola's lips trembled as a shadow passed across her face.

"There is no Lola. There is only Woe,"

"I want Lola. I want to talk to Lola. Lola, speak to me..."

Bugs waited and watched, holding his breath.

Lola's eyes flickered open. There was a dull red glow deep within them. And a horrible unearthly growl came from her mouth, as if from some demonic soul.

"There is no Lola, only Woe!"

"All right – Woe. Listen, carefully. I don't know where you came from or why, and frankly, I don't give a damn, but I want you to get out of here and leave Lola alone. Now, I am going to count to three and when I'm finished, you better be gone! One... Two..."

Lola twitched and shuddered. Her limbs started to shake and she began to rise straight up off the bed, arms at her sides, legs pressed together.

Her gown hung beneath her in silken folds as she lay horizontally in midair, three feet above the bed.

Under Bugs's astonished gaze, Lola started to turn until she was facing downward, her body perfectly straight and unsupported. If this was some kind of trick, Bugs couldn't see how it was being done.

He passed his gloved hands underneath the full length of her body. Nothing. He knelt on the bed and ducked under to look up into her face. Her eyes slowly opened and gazed down into his with a terrible burning intensity, her pupils black and slit.

"Please come down," he said.

Then her head (just her head) turned a whole 360 degrees.

Bugs got out from under fast and backed across the room to the door. He stood there, rubbing his chin, wondering what to do next.


	21. Rudolph

Pepé walked out of the park and into Acme Circle. He turned sharp right in the middle of the pavement and walked stiffly to a line of horse-and-carriages at the curbside. He turned sharply left and approached the horse at the head of the line. He walked up to it, stood next to it, and spoke to it.

"I am Rudolph. Monster and servant of Dr. Frankenbeans. The Evil Scientist. Boo! Are you Woe?"

The horse looked at him but didn't reply.

The coachman, in a flat peaked cap and cape, called down from his seat, "Hey, buddy! He pulls the wagon. I make the deals. You wanna ride?"

Pepé turned his head and fixed his eyes on the coachman.

"Are you Woe?"

"Nah, I'm the Governor of California," the coachman curled his lip. "Now get outta here!"

Pepé's eyes flashed a deep dull red. The black pupils went slit. Pepé raised his arm and pointed at the coachman, his voice rang with a dreadful avenging tone.

"You will perish in flames, sub-creature! Frankenbeans will destroy you and all your kind!" Pepé turned to the horse and whispered, "Wait for the sign. Then all prisoners will be released."

Pepé marched stiffly into the several lanes of traffic speeding around the Circle. Cars screeched and swerved and horns blared.

The noise and disruption alerted two mounted policemen eating outside a hotdog stand. They exchanged glances, and wheeling their horses about, set off at a slow trot to follow Pepé down the street.

* * *

A burly police sergeant knocked on the door to the Quackbusters' headquarters and Penelope answered.

"Dropping off or picking up?" she asked.

"Dropping off,"

"Just a moment," she said, walking back inside.

She returned with Sylvester.

"You a Quackbuster?" the sergeant asked.

"Yes," Sylvester replied.

"We picked up this guy and now we don't know what to do with him," said the sergeant, unlocking the rear door of the van. "Whackyland doesn't want him and I'm afraid to put him in the lock-up. I know you guys are into this stuff, so I figured we'd check with you."

"All right,"

The sergeant swung the door open for Sylvester to look inside.

A tall, thin, bedraggled skunk sat forlornly on the bench. He was fastened to the wall bars with leather restraint straps, and secured to a metal ring in the floor with ankle cuffs.

Pepé gazed at Sylvester with a faint spark of hope, and raised his eyebrows.

"Are you Woe?"

Sylvester ran the PKE meter over him. The antennae sprung to attention and all the lights flashed.

"You better bring him inside, Officer," Sylvester told them.

The sergeant nodded and released Pepé into their custody.

"You are so kind to take care of that man," Penelope said. "You know, you are a real humanitarian."

"Well, I'm not human and neither is he," Sylvester replied. "I don't think he's even _a skunk_ either."

Ten minutes later, Pepé was sitting in the kitchen hooked up to a contraption of Sylvester's devising. On his head, Pepé wore what looked like an aluminum colander, with thick skeins of red and blue wires trailing away from dozens of electrodes.

Sylvester sat hunched before a control console, monitoring Pepé's etheric activity in response to questioning.

Penelope sat on the sofa, gnawing her lip, unable to take her eyes off Pepé. There was something about the skunk that unsettled her. Something scary. But she comforted herself with the thought that Sylvester would know what to do. He usually did, more often than not.

Pepé stared into space, his arms in his lap. He seemed perfectly content to answer Sylvester's questions, speaking in a drab monotone.

"What did you say your name was?" Sylvester asked.

"Rudolph, monster and servant of Dr. Frankenbeans,"

The mention of Frankenbeans made Sylvester sit up and swing around on his stool.

He leaned forward, eyes blinking rapidly, and said slowly and deliberately, "I am Sylvester the Cat, Creature of Earth, former teacher at Acme Looniversity, Professor of Mouse and Bird Chasing."

Penelope picked up Pepé's wallet from the coffee table and flipped through it.

"According to this, his name is Pepé Le Pew," she said, looking at his driver's license. "Lives at Acme Arms Apartments."

"Oh, no," Pepé contradicted her mildly. "Le Pew is the stinkball I'm using. I must wait inside for the sign."

"Do you want something to eat or drink while you're waiting?" Penelope enquired. "Coffee, tea... a cup of noodles?"

Pepé frowned at Sylvester, as if the question was of enormous significance.

"Do I?" he asked.

"Yes, have some," Sylvester replied.

"Yes, have some," Pepé repeated.

Penelope got up and set a kettle of water to boil on the stove.

She turned around and gave a startled gasp.

Pepé had snuck up behind her and his face was mere inches from hers.

"You know, cooking is the second-best thing I do," he said. "For me, it is better to make love _first, **then**_ to eat. Or we could make love _after_."

Penelope punched Pepé in the nose.

Pepé shook his head and said, "Okay, you talked me into it." He moved away from Penelope and added, "I'm sorry! Forgive me, please. My passions overtook me. I forgot myself. I let the little head think for the big one. What can I say? I'm a guy."

"Rudolph," Sylvester said, watching Pepé closely, "you said before you were waiting for a sign. What sign are you waiting for?"

Pepé stared at Sylvester and blankly recited, "Frankenbeans the Evil Scientist. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During rectification of the Voldrini, the Evil Scientist came as a large Garlon. Then, during the third reconciliation of the Prophynia supplicants they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Gort! Many Gossamers and Woes knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Gort that day, I can tell you."

Sylvester stared at Pepé for a long moment, trying to extract some sense from that, and then looked at Penelope, who was wearing a worried frown. She shook her head and beckoned Sylvester to come to her. He sidled across to Penelope.

"Sylvester," she said in a low voice, "there's something very strange about that skunk."

They cast a glance at Pepé, who was sniffing around the outside of a jar of hand cream.

"I may not be psychic, but I have a terrible feeling that something awful is going to happen to you," She touched his arm and looked anxiously into his eyes. "I'm afraid you're going to die."

"I'm not going to die," Sylvester said, trying not to sound indifferent. "I've been stabbed, shot, burned, blown up, electrocuted, maimed, mauled and crushed by heavy objects so many times already that not even death scares me anymore."

"That's so romantic," Penelope sighed, sliding her arms around him and laying her head on his chest.

Sylvester wrapped his arms around her and smiled down at her, and Penelope blushed as she hugged him to her.

Then they were interrupted by the phone ringing.

"I'll get it," Sylvester said. "Hello?"

"Sylvester, it's Bugs. I have some news from Dr. Frankenbeans,"

"What is it, Bugs?"

Bugs was sitting in a chair by Lola's bed. He glanced down.

"I'm here with Lola Bunny. It seems that the Evil Scientist has been putting some moves on my would-be girlfriend,"

"How is she?"

"I feel like I've fallen into a bad, and very unnecessary, remake of _The Exorcist_. That's how she is. I just gave her a couple shots of ZzzQuil. She's gonna take a little nap now, but she says she's Woe, the mistress of Dr. Frankenbeans. Does that make any sense to you?"

"Some. Penelope and I just met Rudolph, the monster and servant," Sylvester said as he glanced at Pepé. "He's here with us now."

There was a very brief silence before Bugs said, "Oh, Doc, we have got to get these two together."

"I think that would be extraordinarily dangerous," which in Sylvester's vocabulary amounted to a definitive veto.

"Okay, well, hold onto him. I'll be there in a few minutes,"

"Good," Sylvester said.

Sylvester hung up just in time to see that Pepé had poured two cups of coffee and two cups of tea, and set them on a silver tray. He swished his tail around and said at Penelope, "Coffee, tea... or _moi?_ "

Penelope moved away from him and closer to Sylvester.

"Thank you, Rudolph," Sylvester said, taking a cup of coffee. "We have to find Daffy and Porky," he told Penelope. "I need them here immediately."

If Penelope heard Sylvester, she didn't respond. She was too busy crawling backwards across the couch as Pepé started to crawl on top of her.

"Your heart is pounding, like mine," he said lustfully.

Then he stopped and shifted his gaze downward. Penelope looked to where Pepé was looking and she realized that she was wearing a skirt.

"I see Britain, I see France..." Pepé sang. "I see-"

Penelope kicked Pepé in the crotch, sending him clear to the far end of the couch.

"Wow!" Pepé exclaimed. "Wowie-wow-wow-wow! I was going to give it to you anyway. Wow! Wowie-wow-wow!"

* * *

"Daffy, do you believe-eh-be-lie-ee-eh-think there is a God?"

Daffy jerked out of his thoughts and blinked.

He sprawled back in the passenger seat of the Quackbuster Mobile, head rolling from side to side as Porky steered the big car along the coastline. His face in the light of the dashboard was deep in thought.

To the West, the Pacific Ocean was a solid black, and to the East, the city shined brightly in the dawn's first light. It had been an odd day, Daffy reflected. The storm clouds that had been threatening all yesterday afternoon seemed to be hanging directly over the city, and refused to break. As if, he thought, they were waiting for something.

"Never met him," Daffy replied. "But I think Jesus had style."

Porky nodded to himself. Whatever people chose to believe was okay with him.

"Well, I believe," Porky said. And he meant it, too.

Daffy gave a slight shrug and stared at the blueprints for the iron work in Lola Bunny's apartment.

"This roof cap is made of a magnesium-tungsten alloy," he said out loud. He didn't know anything about metallurgy or architecture. "Strange."

Several moments passed, and then Porky said, "Do you remember something in the Bib-Eh-Bi-Beh-Bible-Holy Book about the last days, when the dead would rise from the grave?"

"Revelation, Chapter Seven, Verse Twelve," Daffy remembered. "'And I looked as he opened the sixth seal. And behold, there was a great earthquake. And the Sun became black as sackcloth. And the moon became as blood.'"

"And the seas would boil... And the sky would fall," Porky went on.

"'And after three days and a half the Spirit of Life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.' Judgment Day,"

"Eh-Juh-Jeh-Eh-Judgment Day," Porky repeated.

"Every religion has its own belief about the end of the world," Daffy said thoughtfully.

Porky stared through the windscreen, gripping the wheel with both hands.

"Daffy, has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we've been so bus-eh-buh-beh-eh-busy-active lately is because the dead _have_ been rising from their graves?"

Daffy slowly turned his head to look at Porky.

His eyes widened.


	22. Out of Business

Ten o'clock the next morning, a cavalcade of vehicles turned into the dingy street and pulled up outside the old fire station.

A police captain and two officers stepped out of the leading car and stood waiting boredly on the sidewalk for Marvin the Martian of the Earth Protection Agency. With calm faces, they watched as he climbed out of the car with US Government plates.

In a moment, they were joined by a technician in a hardhat.

Marvin glanced up at the neon sign above the door before he marshaled the officers and led them into the building.

"This way, Captain,"

He strode arrogantly through the garage bay en route to the basement, but was stopped by Penelope.

"Just where do you think you're going?" she asked, protracting her claws.

"Step aside, Earth creature, or I'll have you arrested for interfering with a police officer," the Martian said coldly, fixing her with his dark eyes.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Penelope blazed at him, standing her ground. "Do I look like a child? You can't come in here without a warrant!"

Marvin took a bundle of papers from a folder and he rhymed off each document as he thrust them under her nose.

"Cease and Desist All Commerce order. Seizure of Premises. Ban of Public Utilities for Non-Licensed Waste Handlers **and** a Federal Entry and Inspection Order,"

Penelope glowered down at him, knowing she had no choice.

The Martian brushed right past her and led the combined might of the law and the power company man down the stairs.

Seeing the police and government cars parked outside the building, Bugs feared the worst. He dashed in, straight through the garage bay, hearing the voice that he and Daffy both loved to hate as he descended to the basement. That Martian prick.

Bugs took a couple of steady breaths, and entered the basement with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

"At ease, Officers," he said. "I think there's been a misunderstanding here and I want to cooperate in every way I can."

He looked around, taking in the situation at a glance.

Sylvester and Penelope were standing close together in front of the containment unit, next to a skunk with a vacuous look on his face. The three policemen and the technician stood in a bemused circle, while Marvin the Martian, of course, held center stage.

The appearance of Bugs was like a red flag to a bull.

"Mr. Bunny, I tried to stop them," Penelope said. "He says they have a warrant."

"And I told them that this is private property," Sylvester added. "He wants to shut down the protection grid."

"Shut this off," the Martian told the technician. "Shut these all off."

"I'm warning you," Sylvester stated. "Turning off these machines would be extremely hazardous."

"I'll tell you what's hazardous," the Martian countered. "You're facing federal prosecution for at least half a dozen environmental violations. Now, I demand to see what's in there. Now either you shut off these beams, or we'll shut them off for you.'"

And Sylvester's voice, calm and almost polite, "You can see what's inside through the viewing port if you wish. But understand, this is a high-voltage laser containment system. Turning it off would be like dropping a bomb on the city."

"Do not patronize me," the Martian said. "I am not stupid, like the creatures you bilk. And as for cooperation," he said as he spun around and glared at Bugs, "you can forget it. Mr. Duck had a chance to cooperate but he thought it would be more fun to insult me. Well, now it's my turn."

Bugs turned to Marvin and said quietly, "If you shut that down, we will not be held responsible, nor will we take any responsibility, for the consequences."

"You will be held _completely_ responsible!"

The Martian jerked his head at the technician.

"Shut it off!"

The technician stood in front of the control panel, scratching the back of his neck and trying to figure out what the Hell the gauges, meters and winking lights were in aid of.

"Don't shut it off," Bugs said, clenching his fists. "I'm warning you."

"I've never seen anything like this," the technician confessed nervously to the police captain. "I don't know whether we-"

"I'm not interested in your opinion," the Martian practically screamed. "Shut it off!"

The technician looked at the captain, shrugged, and reached up for the master control switch. Bugs leaped forward and pinioned his arms. Over his shoulder, he grated at Marvin through clenched teeth, "Don't be a _joirk_."

At a curt nod from the captain, the two officers stepped forward and dragged Bugs away from the switch.

Marvin gave Bugs a look of pure hatred and said to the captain, "If he tries that again, you can shoot him."

The captain gazed at the Martian with thinly-veiled contempt.

"You do your job, pencil-neck. Don't tell me how to do mine."

"Thank you, Captain," Bugs said, straightening his Tuxedo jacket as the cops released him.

"Shut it off!" Marvin ordered.

As the technician stepped forward, Bugs glanced across at Sylvester, and Sylvester mimed an explosion of horrendous proportions with his paws. Bugs nodded and started to back slowly towards the stairs. Sylvester quietly slipped his hand into Penelope's and drew her with him in the same direction. Pepé saw Sylvester backing away and followed his example.

The technician threw the switch and the needle dropped to zero. The alarm blared as the lights died and the hum of power ceased.

Then, the Martian's expression of triumphant revenge began to smear on his face as he felt the floor tremble under his feet. He looked wildly around, and then staggered back as the entire concrete wall of the facility started to shudder and shake.

"Oh, shit," the technician said.

The mortar between the concrete blocks crumbled away, and behind them a misty light glowed in intensity until it became blinding. Suddenly, two of the blocks flung out, smashing into the opposite wall, and from the gaps poured a thick writhing mist, shot through with dancing particles of glittering light.

Running at full tilt through the garage bay, it seemed to Bugs that the fire house itself was coming alive.

"Clear the building!" he shouted.

Along with Sylvester, Penelope and Pepé, he ran out into the street, the cops and technician on their heels, and the ashen-faced Martian bringing up the rear.

Bugs's feeling wasn't far wrong. From deep within the basement a column of concentrated psychokinetic energy rose up through the floor and erupted through the roof in an iridescent geyser, shooting several feet in the air like a Roman Candle.

Everyone ducked as a shower of ion particles and roof debris rained down and the air was acrid with echoing steamy vapor.

Through it all, Pepé stood and gazed upwards, the glowing geyser of energy reflecting in his eyes.

"It is time," he said. "This is it. This is the sign."

"Yeah, it's a sign, all right," Penelope replied. "We're going out of business."

Pepé turned and walked stiff-legged through the clamor and confusion. He turned a sharp left at the end of the street and walked uptown with a steady, purposeful stride.

It was time. He must find Woe.

* * *

From a point high above Acme Acres, one could see the glistening geyser erupting high into the air. Then it twisted into a spiral of incandescent energy as it turned northward, as if drawn by a powerful magnet. The stream of light, vaporous as a comet's tail, raced towards a tall building west of Acme Park. There it started to coalesce, infusing the burnished dome with a purple glow.

Electric blue static lightning crackled over the superstructure. Over the bronze doors and marble pillars. The entire peak of the building shimmered with a strange, ethereal light.

And as the bolt of energy touched the dome and travelled downward, an upper floor of the building was blasted wide open. The outer wall of an apartment completely disappeared in an explosion of pulverized stonework. The wide picture windows sucked out into space, leaving a jagged gaping hole.

In the bedroom, Lola's eyes sprung open.

Rising from her bed, she walked through the shattered apartment and stood outlined on the very edge of the gaping hole, gazing out over the city. A cool breeze ruffles her fur, tugging at the silken dress swathing her body.

In her dark, slumberous eyes, the light of expectancy kindled and burned with feverish intensity.

It was the sign.

It was the time.

Fulfillment was at hand.

Now she had to wait for the coming of Rudolph.

* * *

Pepé briskly headed uptown, watching the light show in the sky, a fixed, purposeful, trance-like smile on his face. This didn't look at all out of place on the streets of Acme Acres. None of his fellow pedestrians noticed anything out of the ordinary or paid him the slightest attention.

But if the spectacular lights in the sky were visible evidence of strange phenomena abroad in the city, stranger things were happening on the ground.

And below ground.

A crowd of people descended the stairs into the subway. As the last of them disappeared into the entrance, a thin moaning whine echoed through the tiled tunnels. The crowd froze, staring into the gloom. Then turned tail and fled for dear life as an impish apparition, with a shrill giggle, chased them back up the steps and into the street.

Pepé walked through the panic-stricken crowds as they scattered in every direction.

At the next intersection, a hot dog vendor reached into his cart for a bun and a bag of pretzels. A look of mystification slid over his face as his hand encountered empty space. He felt around and screamed, staggering back and clutching the soiled lapels of his coat.

From out of the cart emerged the giant, red and hairy Gossamer, stuffing hotdogs into his mouth. It belched loudly at the stunned customers and ran down the street, the pushcart trundling after it.

Pepé walked on to Acme Square.

There, a nifty spirit popped out of the drain and vanished up the exhaust pipe of a taxi cab. A businessman stepped inside and leaned back expansively, unfolding the _Variety_.

"Fifty-Seventh Street. And I'm in a hurry, so let's not dawdle,"

The driver turned and touched his cap with a skeletal claw, its decomposing face stretched in a ghastly grin. At once the cab peeled away from the curb, executing a U-turn at fifty miles an hour in heavy traffic, and turned the wrong way up a one-way street.

With the grinning corpse at the wheel, it raced at breakneck speed through the oncoming traffic, forcing cars onto the sidewalks and pedestrians to leap for safety. While in the back, the businessman calmly puffed a large cigar and pursued the Dow Jones Index.

With a gentle smile, Pepé walked on.

In offices, shops, bars and restaurants, cinemas and clubs, taxis and buses, the slums and the best hotels – in every highway and byway and nook and cranny throughout Acme Acres – the monsters had come out to play.

And the city was their playground.

* * *

The streets were full of chaos. The city's emergency task force; fire engines, police cars, ambulances and public utility vehicles, trained to deal with natural disasters and hazardous chemical spillages, had been called in.

By now, Daffy had returned to the burning, gutted shell of the old fire station in the Quackbuster Mobile with Porky, and they saw it surrounded by translucent blue flame, spurting hundreds of feet into the overcast sky.

Daffy pushed his way through the police cordon, followed by Porky.

"What happened?" Daffy asked.

"Storage facility blew," Sylvester explained. He nodded at the Martian. "He shut off the protection grid."

"Oh, great," Daffy remarked.

"That's bad, right?" Porky asked.

"Yeah," Daffy confirmed.

Bugs was suddenly stricken with a chilling thought. He looked around wildly, squinting through the crowd.

"Where's the skunk?" Bugs asked.

Sylvester's jaw dropped open. "Shit!"

"What skunk?" Daffy asked, looking from Bugs to Sylvester.

Bugs and Sylvester exchanged grim glances. The ectoplasmic eruption in the basement was a squib compared to what would happen if Woe and Rudolph ever encountered one another, and were allowed to prepare the way for Frankenbeans.

"Come on!" Sylvester shouted.

They started off in search of Pepé, but Marvin the Martian stopped them.

"Hold it! I want this creature arrested!" he barked at one of the police officers while jabbing his finger at Daffy. "Captain, these creatures are in criminal violation of the Earth Protection Act! And this explosion is a direct result of it!"

Quiet, serious, studious Sylvester finally went for him. He got a grip with one paw around Marvin's thin neck and, with the other paw, successfully clawed the Martian across the face and eyes.

A couple of cops hauled Sylvester off and supported the wilting Martian, who was feebly holding his face and bleeding out of his eyes.

The police captain had had as much as he could take. Personally, he detested the slimly little pipsqueak, and the others seemed like regular guys. But in situations like this, there was only one sure answer.

"I don't know what the Hell's going on here, but I'm going to have to arrest you all," he said. "You can discuss it with the judge."

Bugs caught Sylvester's eye and shook his head. It was wonderful to see Sylvester get physical and lash out at Marvin for what he had done. But now the ectoplasm was really going to hit the fan.


	23. Holding Cell

Answering that ad was the biggest mistake of his life. That's what Porky Pig was thinking as he stared through the bars of the Acme Acres Police lock-up.

"Hey, guard!" he shouted. "I w-eh-whu-eh-want-demand my one phone call! I just work with these guys, I wasn't even there!"

In the cage behind him, Bugs, Daffy and Sylvester had their thoughts to occupy them. Glancing over his shoulder, Daffy was uneasily aware of the other denizens of the cell, watching and listening with a mixture of intense curiosity and scowling suspicion. Not a particularly appealing bunch of individuals: drunks, muggers, flashers, junkies, and petty hoods – the bottom of the barrel scrapings off the city streets.

And spread out on a bench in the middle of the cell was the blueprint of Lola's apartment building, burrowed from the City Planning Department. Bugs, Daffy and Sylvester, all three, had studied it in detail, and believed that they had come up with the answer.

"The structure of this roof cap is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space," Sylvester said, tapping the blueprint. "Fabricated with magnesium-tungsten alloy," he said with a thoughtful frown. "And look at this – cold-riveted girders with cores of pure Selenium 325."

As Bugs leaned over to look, he noticed they had a fascinated audience, also craning to take a peek.

"Everybody getting this so far?" he asked the other inmates with a bright smile.

Scratching their heads and muttering, their cellmates drifted back.

"The ironwork extends down through fifty feet of bedrock and touches the water table," Sylvester went on, looking up at the others.

Daffy would be impressed as well, if he only understood half of what Sylvester had been jabbering on about.

"So what?" he asked with a shrug. "I guess they just don't make them like they used to."

"No!" Bugs exclaimed, slapping Daffy upside the head. "Nobody **_ever_** made them like this. I mean, the architect was either a certified genius or an authentic wacko!"

"Okay, Bugs, for a moment, pretend that nobody here knows a thing about metallurgy, engineering or physics and just tell me what the Hell is going on!" Daffy said.

"You never studied," Bugs replied, smiling. "The whole building is a giant superconductive antenna that was designed and built for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence!"

The lights began to dawn in Daffy's eyes at last. At that moment, he saw how Lola Bunny fit into the picture. And he had a feeling that when Bugs found out, Bugs was going to like it even less.

"Your girlfriend lives in the corner penthouse of spook central," Daffy said.

"She's not my girlfriend," Bugs replied shortly. "I find her interesting because she's a client and because she sleeps above her covers. Four feet above her covers! She barks, she drools, she claws..."

"It's not her, Bugs," Sylvester interjected, "it's the building. Something terrible is about to enter our world, and this building is obviously the door. I looked up the architect's name. It was Henry Jekyll. I found him in _Tobin's Spirit Guide_. He was also a doctor who performed a lot of unorthodox experiments. And then, in 1920, he started a secret society."

Daffy straightened up and folded his arms in front of his chest. It was all falling into place now.

"Let me guess," he replied. "Evil Scientists."

"Right," Sylvester nodded.

"No studying," Daffy bragged.

"After the First World War, Jekyll decided that society was too sick to survive," Sylvester went on. "And he wasn't alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted experiments up on the roof. Bizarre experiments intended to bring about the end of the world. And now it looks like it may actually happen."

The more he learned about this, the less Daffy liked it.

"We have to get out of here," Bugs said.

Porky stood over the three screwballs, shaking his head. He'd never heard of such stuff.

"Hey, wait a minute!" he finally shouted. "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Hold it! Are we actually going to go before a federal judge and say that some moldy, wanna-be Boris Karloff is gonna drop in and start tearing up the city? No offense, but I gotta get my own lawyer."

Suddenly, a tall, hollow-faced man in a police inspector's uniform approached the bars.

"Quackbusters, the mayor wants to see you guys," He nodded to the guard, who unlocked the cell door. "The whole city's going crazy," he added as the guard swung the door open. "Let's go!"


	24. Woe Meets Rudolph

A tremor shook the building as Pepé pushed through the revolving door. The residents had already evacuated. Pepé stepped inside the empty elevator and rode it to the twenty-second floor.

Pepé came out into the corridor, walked past his own apartment and approached Lola Bunny's half-open door. He stood there for a moment and then pushed the door fully open.

A desolate wind blew through the apartment. The rubble of the shattered outer wall littered the floor. And there, her slender figure in stark silhouette, stood the lady that Pepé's unconscious mind had been lusting after for years.

He moved toward her and they met face to face on the brink of the crumbling precipice as another tremor shook the building.

"I am Rudolph, the Monster and Servant,"

"I am Woe, the Mistress,"

Lola stood before him, her eyes probing into his, her lips parted in voluptuous invitation.

She smiled.

She reached forward and took Pepé in her arms and bent over his swooning form in a crushing embrace.

Pepé submitted and he clung and sunk beneath her on to the couch as a shaft of lightning flashed and thunder rumbled across the sky.


	25. Mayor Fudd's Office

The Quackbusters' first impression was that City Hall was going crazy too. They were relieved to find that what they took to be a lynch mob waiting on the front steps was in fact a jostling, surging crowd of reporters and photographers. Questions were flung at them and a battery of cameras clicked as they were hustled through the pack and into the building by officials and a ten-man-strong police escort.

Inside wasn't much better.

A barely-contained hysteria verged on wholesale panic seemed to have infected everyone. The normal decorum had been turned into a three-ring circus, with plenty of clowns and no ringmaster.

And at the quiet epicenter of that hurricane, four bemused and bewildered toons who called themselves the Quackbusters – plucked from a prison cell and thrust into the limelight.

Daffy was used to ups and downs in his life, but this was making even his head spin.

Led by the police inspector, the Quackbusters were taken directly to the mayor's private office. The atmosphere was one of dignified pandemonium, with civic leaders, high-ranking officials and council aides all trying to have their say. The only problem was that none of them knew what they were talking about. Acme Acres had never had a plague of monsters before.

"I've got a city bwowing up, and you guys awen't giving me answews," the Mayor said.

"We're blocking the bridges, the roads-" the Police Commissioner replied.

"The Quackbusters are here, Mr. Mayor," an aide said.

The discordant babble died away as the Quackbusters entered, all eyes turned and regarded them curiously.

The mayor, a short, thick-set man with a bald head, shooed the aide out of his path and came forward like a cocky prizefighter stepping into the center of the ring.

Bugs smiled.

It was Elmer Fudd.

Fudd may have swapped his brown hunting fatigues and rifles for a suit and pens, but to Bugs Bunny, he looked like the same old hunter who had been chasing him for decades. Almost exactly the same, except for one detail: his eyes. Once, those eyes had been so full of life when he chased Bugs around the forest with rigorous abandon. Now, he had the hard, shrewd eyes of a political old pro. The eyes of a man who had been through the ropes before and had always bounced back.

"Okay. And where's this Mawtian?" he asked.

Bugs and Daffy both groaned inwardly as Marvin squirmed forward out of the crowd. Already he was high on adrenaline and he had a feverish glint in his bloodshot eyes.

"I am Marvin the Martian, sir, and I am prepared to make a full report. These creatures are complete con artists," he said, pointing a trembling finger at the Quackbusters. "They use sense and nerve gases to induce hallucinations. People think they are seeing monsters, and they call these bozos who conveniently show up to deal with the problem with a fake electronic light show."

Bugs couldn't take any more of this crap.

"Bullshit! Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here. That's what started it all," he appealed to Mayor Fudd. "He is responsible for the problem you're now facing."

"They caused an explosion!" Marvin burbled on. "And _he **clawed my face!**_ " he added, pointing at Sylvester.

"Is this twue?" Elmer asked, turning to the Quackbusters.

"Yes, it's true," Daffy nodded firmly. "Martian men do not have dicks. I can vouch for that."

Marvin lurched at Daffy and was shoved back by Bugs and Sylvester.

"Hey, come on. Bweak it up, bweak it up! This is City Hall!" Fudd shouted. "Now, what am I gonna do here? What is this?"

Mayor Fudd looked around for help. He was out of his depth.

"All I know is that was no light show we saw this morning," the Fire Commissioner said quietly. "I've seen every form of combustion known to man... but this beats the Hell out of me."

"And nobody's been using nerve gas," the Police Commissioner agreed. "The walls in the First Precinct were _bleeding,_ " he told the Martian. "How do you explain that?"

There was a flurry of activity at the door, and an aide ushered in the Archbishop of the Acme Acres Diocese, resplendent in his robes of office.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," he said.

Mayor Fudd rose and rushed forward with a welcoming smile.

"Oh, Your Eminence, how good of you to come," he said.

He made a little formal bow and kissed the Archbishop's ring.

"How are you, Elmer?"

"You're wooking good, Mike. We're in a weal fix hewe. Is thewe anything – any advice you can possibwy give us to resowve this situation? What do you think I shouwd do?"

The Archbishop considered for a moment or two.

"Elmer, officially, the Church will not take any position on the religious implications of these... phenomena. Personally," he went on, "I think it's a sign from God. But don't quote me on that."

Mayor Fudd rubbed his eyes wearily and sat down behind his desk. He didn't know who to trust or what to believe anymore.

"Well, I can't call a pwess confewence and tell evewyone to stawt pwaying," he said despairingly.

Porky felt it was his turn to say something. Pushing forward, he leaned over the desk, his face composed and deadly earnest.

"Mister Mayor, I'm Porky Pig. I've only been with the company for a fe-eh-feh-eh-few-couple weeks. But I have to tell you, these things are _real_ ," he tapped the desk with his knuckles. "Since I joined these guys, I have seen shi-eh-sheh-eh-sh-stuff that would turn the rest of the Jacksons white."

Mayor Fudd stared at Porky. He was not sure how much more of this he could stand. His eyes roamed around the roomful of silent people and finally fell on Daffy. Daffy seized his chance.

"Mr. Mayor," he said, speaking quickly and calmly, "it's a pretty simple choice. You can either believe the alien here-"

"Martian!" snarled the little man, close to breaking point.

"-or you can accept the fact that this city is heading for a disaster of biblical proportions."

"What do you mean, 'bibwical'?" Fudd asked.

"What we mean is Old Testament," Bugs said, rallying around his friends and giving it to Fudd straight. "Real wrath-of-God-type stuff."

"The end of the world as we know it," added Sylvester.

"Fire and brimstone raining down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling," Bugs went on.

"Darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes erupting," Sylvester continued.

"The dead rising from the grave!" Porky shouted.

"Human sacrifice, interspecies romance and breeding together, mass hysteria!" Daffy yelled.

"Enough!" Elmer cried. "I get the point." He looked distraught with indecision. "But what if you're wrong?"

"If I'm wrong, then nothing happens!" Bugs replied. "You can toss us in the can! We'll go peacefully, quietly. I'll even enjoy it. But if I'm right... and we can stop this thing... Elmer, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters."

Elmer looked toward the Archbishop who, with a glimmer of a mischievous smile, nodded in reply.

From the expression on his face, it was clear that the mayor was giving serious consideration to this cogent and eminently rational argument. Bugs saw it, and so did the Martian.

"I don't believe you're seriously considering listening to these creatures,"

Fudd breathed in, took a long look at Marvin, and breathed out again.

"Get this extwatewwestwial out of my sight!"

"I'll fix you!" the Martian shouted at the Quackbusters as two police officers hauled him out of the office. "I'm gonna fix all of you!"

"I am going to miss him," Daffy commented.

Elmer turned to Bugs, like a welterweight limbering up for the big fight and said, "We got work to do. Now, what do you need fwom me?"


	26. Working the Crowd

The rear of City Hall was a hive of activity. True to his word, Mayor Fudd had placed every resource and facility at the Quackbusters' disposal.

Bugs loaded their gear into the Quackbuster Mobile while Sylvester and Porky charged the proton packs from the City Hall power supply. Daffy stood on the loading dock, conferring with a police captain and two officers.

The captain reported briskly that preparations were already underway.

"We've cleared out the whole Acme Arms Apartment building, we've shut down everything from 59th to 65th, and cordoned off 78th Street. I'm massing our own special tactics squad and the National Guard is on stand-by," he said.

"Better alert the Red Cross, too," Daffy suggested.

Daffy jumped down and joined the others. They donned their jumpsuits and ran a final check on their equipment. The proton packs were charged, the particle throwers primed. Now, it was up to them.

"Come on, let's run some red lights!" Daffy shouted.

At Daffy's command, the motorcade moved off through the gates of City Hall. With a vanguard of police outriders and three armored police cruisers and a U.S. Army Humvee, the Quackbuster Mobile sped uptown, strobes flashing and siren wailing.

Cars pulled over to let them pass while people on the sidewalks stood and gawped. Midtown Acme Acres had come to a halt. Soon, they were past Acme Circle and headed up Acme Park West.

* * *

The Quackbuster Mobile pulled up outside the Acme Arms Apartments building. The doors flew open and the Quackbusters leapt out.

Immediately, a roar erupted from the hundreds of humans and toons lining the street, held back by the police barriers. Groups of nuns, priests and rabbis had gathered and were praying for them. Every class, creed and color was there, cheering themselves hoarse as Daffy, ever the showman, clasped both hands above his head in the gesture of a contender going into battle for the big one.

"Hello, Acme Acres," he said. "Hello, everybody! Professor Bugs Bunny, would you please? The heart of the Quackbusters. Thank you. They love you. They love you," he told Bugs.

"Get 'em, Quackbusters!" screamed a bunch of girl groupies.

"Go get 'em!" yelled a bunch of heavily-tattooed punks with multi-colored hair.

And the cries echoed down the street, from a crowd, eyes wild with excitement.

"Quackbusters! Quackbusters! Quackbusters! Quackbusters!"

Bugs hauled out the weaponry from the back of the Quackbuster Mobile and the four toons buckled on their proton packs.

Keyed-up and ready to go, Daffy looks at his friends and said, "Okay, whatever happens, let's be professional."

As they turned and headed for the entrance, a flash of lightning from the temple rooftop cast a blinding light over the street. The building appeared to tilt, and the sidewalk under their feet shifted and reared up.

Suddenly, a crack zigzagged the length of the pavement and the four Quackbusters lost their balance and toppled into the crevasse.

A tense hush settled over the crowd. The dust slowly settled and cleared. Then a gloved hand clawed its way out of the concrete rubble and Bugs's beaming face popped out. A cheer rung out, and then another, as the Quackbusters, alive and kicking, climbed out of the pit.

"It's all right. Don't worry," Daffy reassured everyone. "We're fine. We can handle it. We can take it. They want to play rough? Let's do it!"

Raising their fists in gestures of defiance, they entered the building, the cheers and applause of the crowd ringing in their ears.

* * *

Over a dozen flights of stairs later, their defiance seemed to have deserted them.

"Where are we?" Daffy asked, heaving for breath.

"In the teens somewhere," Bugs replied.

"Well, when we get to 20, tell me," Daffy remarked. "I'm gonna throw up."

Gasping and coughing, they staggered from the stairwell into the corridor of the twenty-second floor, and sagged weakly against the walls.

"Art deco. Very nice," Sylvester commented.

"Where is it?" Daffy asked.

"It's at the end of the hall," Bugs replied.

Outside Lola's apartment they halted and stood in a shuffling circle, looking uneasily at the charred and blackened frame of the door.

Bugs gently pushed the door open. It fell off its hinges and crashed to the floor, revealing the scene of devastation within.

Cautiously, the Quackbusters entered the wrecked apartment. Shredded curtains fluttered in the moaning wind and through the space where there was once a wall. The furniture was swept into a jumbled, splintered heap in one corner.

One of the interior walls had been blasted away, and through the hole of crumbled plaster and brick was a stone stairway.

Sylvester stepped towards it, over the rubble.

"Hey, where do these stairs go?" he asked.

"They go up," Daffy said.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," the others thought.

"Go ahead," Daffy added as he slapped Bugs on the shoulder.

Bugs scowled. The same old Daffy Duck. Always last to go first.

Bugs squared his jaw and led the charge up the stairway. Close on his heels, the others charged up the stone steps, all four emerging on to the roof in time to witness the most incredible sight of their lives: the transformation of a female bunny and a male skunk into Tasmanian Devils.


	27. Dr Frankenbeans

Outlined against the black and angry sky, Lola and Pepé stood on the empty stone plinths, facing the dome of the temple. Fierce blue sparks of pure energy crackled over the stonework of the building. From above, higher than the dome itself, two beams lanced down and transfixed them in an aura of glowing plasma. They bent, then they crouched, then grew thick furry hides. Their skulls broadened, flattened, and sprouted horns. Their hands elongated into splayed paws with curved black talons.

No longer Lola and Pepé. Instead, two snarling Tasmanian Devils with slit black pupils in their glowing red eyes.

The others looked at Bugs.

"All right," he conceded. "Okay. So, she's a dog."

Now a transformation was happening to the temple. With a ponderous groaning and grating of stone, the walls began to separate and open, revealing its secret architecture. A broad marble staircase stretched into the distance, and beyond, a huge translucent pyramid hung suspended in the air.

A bright yellow light descended the staircase, and as it floated nearer, the glowing sphere slowly changed and solidified into a form that was vaguely human.

The form of a short, thin and hideous man clad in a white lab coat.

Raising his hand, he beckoned the Tasmanian Devils to him. They leapt from their plinths and stood fawning as he stroked their fur.

"It's Dr. Frankenbeans," Sylvester stated.

Daffy took a good, long look at the Evil Scientist.

"He's a jell-o head with a turkey neck, cauliflower ears, prune lips and hotdog breath," he said out loud. "Frankly, he looks more like the Hometown buffet than an evil scientist."

"Well, whatever he is, he's gotta get by us," Bugs replied.

"Go get him, Porky!" Daffy whispered.

Taking a brave step forward, Porky stuck his chest out and called out, "Dr. Franken-eh-buh-beh-eh-Dr. Frankenbeans?"

As if becoming aware of their presence for the first time, the Evil Scientist turned his gaze upon them. The other three cowered behind Porky, wondering if he'd taken leave of his senses. Apparently, he had, because he went on sternly.

"As a duly dep-eh-duh-deh-depute-duh-deputized-designated representative of the City of Acme Acres, and on be-eh-buh-beh-eh-behalf of the State of California, the United States of America, the peh-puh-peh-eh-planet Earth and all its inhabitants, I hereby order you to ce-eh-cuh-ceh-eh-cease and desist all supernatural activity and return at once to your pe-eh-puh-pleh-place of origin or nearest convenient parallel dimension."

"That ought to do it, Porky," Daffy murmured dryly. "Thanks a lot."

Frankenbeans drew himself to his full, unimposing height and asked curiously, "Are you a god?"

Porky turned to Daffy for support. Daffy nodded.

Porky shrugged.

"No."

"Then die!"

Frankenbeans raised both of his arms and sent searing bolts of lightning from his fingertips, which blasted the Quackbusters and sent them tumbling to the edge of the roof.

Shaking his dazed head, Bugs said furiously, "Doc, if someone asks you if you're a god, you say, 'YES!'"

Daffy untangled himself and got up. Now he was mad.

"Okay, that's it!" he stated. "This guy is toast!"

In line abreast, the Quackbusters mounted the marble stairs, activating their proton drivers for an entrapment. Now they meant business.

"Got your stick?" Daffy asked them.

They unclipped their throwers and set the controls.

"Holding it!" the other three stated.

"Heat them up!" Daffy shouted.

"Smoking!" the other three said.

"Make them hard!" Daffy added.

"Ready!" they shouted.

"Let's how this wanna-be horror icon how we do things downtown," Daffy said. "Throw it!"

Taking aim, they fired off four streams of particles. Frankenbeans stood, as if bracing himself to take the full quantum shock – and then left the ground in a leap of superhuman agility. Soaring high above their heads, he did a double-flip in midair and landed behind them on the stone balustrade encircling the roof.

"Agile bastard, isn't he?" Daffy muttered.

"Forget the trapping!" Sylvester urged. "We better go full stream."

The Quackbusters adjusted their throwers to maximum charge.

"Blast him!" Bugs shouted.

Bunched together in a tight group, they unleashed four more streams at peak concentration that converged on the target in a deadly blaze of destructive power.

At first, it seemed that Frankenbeans could withstand even that. His lab coat absorbed the blast without strain, his face a calm mask.

Then in a vivid white flash of light, he vanished, leaving behind a hail of particles which were quickly blown away into the wind.

In the long silence that followed, Daffy looked at the others, stunned.

"Wasn't so hard," he said.

"We did it!" Bugs beamed.

Porky let out a whoop of triumph.

"We had the tools. We had the sk-eh-skeh-eh-skill-talent!"

But Sylvester wasn't so sure. He scanned the air with his PKE meter. He studied the reading and frowned.

"This looks extraordinarily bad," he said.


	28. Roboticus Giganticus

Somebody or something was moving the building on its foundations. The Quackbusters looked at each other in alarm as the entire edifice shuddered and swayed. Cracks appeared in the ornate stone moldings as carvings broke away and toppled into the street far below.

From out of the dark clouds, a single bolt of lightning struck the temple dome. A thunderclap reverberated from high and rocked the rooftop.

Daffy had the uncomfortable feeling that they'd made somebody mad.

The Quackbusters raised their eyes fearfully as a voice spoke to them. The being in human form apparently wasn't the genuine Frankenbeans, merely some kind of surrogate. But there could be no question now.

This was the real thing!

"Sub-creatures!" the voice thundered. "Frankenbeans the Evil Scientist, has come. Choose and perish!"

"Is he talking to us?" Daffy asked.

"What's he talking about?" asked Porky. "Choose what?"

"What do you mean, 'choose'?" Bugs shouted up into the stormy sky. "We don't understand."

"Choose! Choose the form of your destruction!"

The words rocked the Quackbusters on their heels.

"I think he's saying that since we're about to be sacrificed anyway," Sylvester said thoughtfully, "we get to choose the form we want it to take."

The awful possibility dawned on Daffy.

"Oh, I get it. I get it. Very cute," he said. "So, you mean that if I stand here and concentrate, whatever I think of will appear? Like, if we think of J. Edgar Hoover, Dr. Frankenbeans will appear as J. Edgar Hoover and destroy us?"

"That appears to be the case," Sylvester replied gravely.

"Okay, so empty your heads." Daffy said as he swung around and faced the others. "Empty your heads! Don't think of anything. We've only got one shot at this."

"The choice is made! The Evil Scientist has come!"

"No!" Daffy shouted, as panic rose in his throat. "I didn't think of an image! We didn't choose anything! Nobody chose anything!" He looked wildly at Sylvester. "Did you choose anything?"

"No!"

They both looked at Porky.

"My mind is a total vo-eh-voh-veh-eh-void-blank,"

"I didn't choose anything!"

All three turned and looked at Bugs.

"I couldn't help it," he confessed guiltily. "It just popped in there."

" _What?_ " Daffy asked dangerously. " _What_ just popped in there?"

"I-I tried to think-"

"Look!" Sylvester shouted.

They all turned toward the South and ran to the corner wall... to where Sylvester was pointing.

Something big, shiny and mechanical was moving in the area of Acme Circle. And it was _huge_ – dwarfing the buildings around it. They could hear the sounds of thundering footsteps in the distance, like seismic shockwaves, plodding nearer and nearer.

"No!" Bugs protested. "It can't be!"

"What is it?" Daffy asked. "What did you do, Bugs?"

"Oh, sh-eh-sheh-shi-eh-crap," Porky cursed.

Through the buildings they glimpsed what appeared to be a fat silver arm, the size of a hot-air balloon.

Bugs was shocked. He sagged weakly at the knees. The huge tin can plod onward up Acme Park West. Its chest, the size of a football field, came into view, and then its massive smiling face, broad as a billboard. Arms and legs made of hard, metal cylinders, body smooth and silver and round, topped by a bobbing head of square metal.

The Quackbusters gaped in utter stupefaction. It couldn't be, but it was. All ten stories tall of it.

"It's a giant attack robot," Bugs squeaked.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day," Daffy commented.

"I tried to think of something harmless," Bugs said pitifully. "Something that could never, ever possibly destroy us... but then a nightmare slipped into my head... a giant attack robot."

"Nice thinking, Bugs," Daffy replied.

Its big hard metal feet stepped on cars and lampposts, crushing them flat, the giant robot plod merrily towards them, head bobbing up and down with each twelve-foot stride.

"Well, Bugs has gone bye-bye, Sylvester," Daffy said grimly. "What have you got left?"

"I'm sorry, Daffy. But I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought," Sylvester replied.

It finally arrived and turned its smiling face up to look at the building.

"Oh, no," Porky said quietly.

"Mother pus bucket," Daffy swore.

The crowd in the street below scattered, fleeing the robot's tread, leaving behind two police cruisers with half a dozen cops sheltering behind them. Crouching, powerless to do anything, they stared upward with their hearts in their mouths as the giant robot crossed the street in a single stride, and planted its foot on to the foot of the church next door, using it as a stepping-stone to climb up the building.

"Nobody steps on a church in my town!" Daffy shouted.

The Quackbusters lined up on the edge of the roof, weapons drawn, steeling themselves to face the Attack of the Fifty-Foot Giant Attack Robot.

As its huge smiling face swelled beneath them Bugs shouted the order, "Full stream, blast him!"

Four curling streams spit out and engulfed the giant robot in a crossfire of searing energy. Scorching holes ringed with blue flame appeared in its chest and belly and spread along its arms and legs. Bellowing with pain and rage, it flailed is huge arms as flaming hunks of melting metal started to peel off, revealing an empty metal ribcage.

Massive flaming chunks of heated metal splattered the street below like giant cow patties.

"G-eh-good-geh-eh-great," Porky thought. "Now we've made him ma-eh-muh-meh-eh-angry."

Even with most of its chest melted away, the robot climbed the face of the building, clinging with metal fingertips to windowsills and sliding metal toes along ledges. It raised a burning fist, about to swipe them into oblivion.

"Funny us going out like this," Daffy said, almost philosophically. "Killed by a fifty-foot robot."

Just then, Sylvester came up with the best idea of his life.

"We've been going about this all wrong," he said. "I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate."

"How?" Bugs asked.

"We'll cross the streams," Sylvester stated.

Daffy swung around and hesitated.

"Excuse me, Sylvester," he said. "You said crossing the streams was bad. You're gonna endanger us. You're gonna endanger our client... the nice lady who paid us in advance before she became a dog."

"Not necessarily," Sylvester replied. "There's definitely a very slim chance we'll survive."

"I love this plan," Daffy said. "I'm excited to be a part of it. Let's do it!"


	29. Crossing the Streams

If Daffy expected it to be horrendous, he was disappointed. It was even worse.

They ran up the marble steps, raised their weapons and pointed them at the gate.

Bugs gave the Tasmanian Devil (Lola) a lingering, regretful look, then powered up his proton pack.

"See you on the other side, Bugs," Daffy said as he fired the first particle stream.

"Nice working with you, Professor Duck," Bugs replied as he fired the second stream.

Bugs and Daffy slowly joined their streams together and Sylvester and Porky fired theirs.

"Now!" Bugs shouted.

At the focal point of crossing all four streams, an intense white-hot globe of plasma exploded like an atomic bomb, obliterating the temple and the Tasmanian Devils in a shockwave of heat and light.

Blown off their feet by the blast, the Quackbusters watched with dazed eyes and numbed senses as the mechanical monstrosity, and its pilot (the Evil Scientist), were ripped apart in a fiery explosion.

Above the skyscrapers of Acme Acres, the dark clouds were suddenly caught up in a cyclonic firestorm. Molten metal sprayed out and spattered down, drenching the rooftops in a thick viscous layer. Swirling faster and faster, it sucked the flaming mass of gas and carbonized ash up and into the center of the vortex.

The dark clouds were sucked into it and then diminished into a hazy brown speck. And then it vanished into the stratosphere. And, as if swept clean by a gigantic vacuum, the beautiful blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see.

Down below, a little man in Roman war gear, with dark eyes and a thin neck ran up the street. The Martian panicked and turned left, and then right. He looked up and a chunk as big as a bus buried him in half a ton of white hot metal.

The once magnificent temple was now in ruins. The Tasmanian Devils, barely recognizable under a crust of blackened carbon, were burned to a crisp.

This time there was no doubt. With the destruction of his minions and his giant robot, Dr. Frankenbeans had been defeated.

Covered in clinging molten alloy, the Quackbusters crawled out from the shelter of the parapet and looked around.

"Porky, are you all right?" Daffy asked.

"Eh-ye-yea-eh-yeah," Porky chuckled in reply.

"Bugs? Sylvester!" Daffy called out. "Bugs! Sylvester. Oh, Sylvester. Are you okay?"

"I feel like the floor of a taxicab," he replied. "But I'm alright."

"You all right?" Daffy asked Porky again.

"I'm all right," replied Porky. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Bugs, you okay?" Daffy asked.

Bugs stood on the cracked marble staircase, gazing with a heavy heart at the charred remains of the Tasmanian Devils.

"It smells like barbecued dog hair," Daffy commented. "Oh! Bugs. Oh, Bugs, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just- I just forgot."

Bugs hung his head and shed a tear.

He felt no sense of victory or triumph. The Quackbusters may have won. But Bugs had lost.

Suddenly, a slight movement in one of the paws caught his eye. Then, he heard a scratching sound.

Hardly daring to believe or to hope, Bugs watched a chunk of the charred crust fall away. Inside he could see a hand. A gloved hand. A gloved female hand.

Bugs tore into the black coating, ripping it apart. An arm appeared, and then a face. Lola's face.

"Help! Somebody!" came a frightened call from the other Tasmanian Devil.

"Go check on that guy!" Bugs told his cohorts.

Bugs slipped an arm around Lola's waist, pulled her clear and held her in his arms. She leaned her head against is chest, swept by a wave of dizziness.

"What? Who? Huh? What happened?" she asked.

Coming to her senses, Lola looked up and into Bugs's eyes.

"Bugs. Are you okay?"

"Me? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Are _you_ okay?"

"Oh, Bugs, thank you,"

"It was nothing," he said modestly.

"That was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me," she said. "You're my hero!"

And she kissed him.

Daffy, Sylvester and Porky freed Pepé, who staggered to his feet. Upon seeing Lola, a spasm of guilty panic crossed his face.

"Lola, I swear, I never touched you!" he said. "Not that I remember, anyway."

"Don't worry. You'll be all right," Porky told him.

Pepé looked around, taking in the wreckage and said, "Wow. The superintendent's going to be pissed."

"Are you okay?" Sylvester asked.

"Who are you guys?" Pepé replied.

"We're the Quackbusters," Daffy answered proudly.

"You know, Mr. Le Pew, you are a very fortunate skunk," Sylvester said. "You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909."

"It felt great,"

"We'd like to get a sample of your brain tissue," Sylvester added.

"Okay,"

Pork stood and raised his hands to the sky, and shouted, "I love this town!"

* * *

Led by Bugs and Lola, arm in arm, the Quackbusters emerged from the building to a deafening ovation. From end to end, the entire street was jammed with happy, jubilant citizens.

Penelope rushed up and hugged Sylvester, whose long face broke into a shy smile.

Standing in front of the Quackbuster Mobile, the best – and only – Quackbusters waved to the crowd, acknowledging the cheers and applause. Kids astride their parents' shoulders, wearing Quackbuster T-shirts, waved back excitedly.

Lola laughed as Bugs leaped to the barrier and started shaking hands and kissing babies, as if he were running for president. And even when they were all in the Quackbuster Mobile and driving down Acme Park West, lights flashing and siren wailing, he was giving the wildly cheering crowd all he had.

But Bugs Bunny was no fool. This was a goodwill investment in the future of Quackbusters Inc.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week – but sometime soon – a lot of those people and toons were going to be awakened by ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night.

And when that happens, they'll know who to call.

Right?


End file.
